Just Go With It
by L. Alex Greene
Summary: AU! The one where Cronus is a greaser, Kankri becomes the junior class president, and just about everyone is secretly gay or bisexual. M for various things including language and smut. CronKri, EriSol, and many, many, MANY others. 1950s humanstuck because there are not enough CronKri greaserstuck fics.
1. Chapter 1

**I could not resist. I kind of fell in love with the CronKri ship while writing this and...yeah, anyway, Cronus is a major douche in this fic, at least in the beginning. The current day for this chapter is August 29, 1955.**

***pssst* I'm tracking this on Tumblr with the tag "just go with it cronkri" if you're into that kind of thing.**

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Mornings were typically annoying for Cronus, but this morning was particularly irritating. He supposed being a senior should have filled him with a sense of triumph, but really, it was still the first day of school and he _really_ didn't want to go back, not just yet.

He briefly contemplated skipping the first day, but as he hopped into a pair of jeans and rolled the cuffs to the top of his high-tops, he realized he couldn't. He had to drive Eridan to school, after all, and there was no way he'd get away with just dropping him at the front and zooming away. Hell, by then, he might as well just stay there and suffer through the rest of the day. It _was_ only the first day, too, so the odds of getting any homework was slim.

He slid a white T-shirt over his head and scanned his mess of a room for his jacket. The guy on the radio had said it would get into the low eighties today before transitioning to "Cool Cat Cavalcade" by Jimmy Rocket and the Engines (it had been burning up the airwaves all summer), so he wouldn't need the jacket for comfort, just for aesthetics.

He finally found it draped over the back of his chair. He was quite proud of it, actually—black leather with _The Lost Boys_ stitched across the back in silver with a symbol he'd designed two years ago outlined in gold. The symbol was wispy-looking aside from two sharp points radiating at a downward angle from the middle. He didn't have his name stitched onto the front like the girls in Meenah's group (they called themselves the Fuchsia Ladies, something he couldn't help but snicker at), but that was because everyone in the Lost Boys could tell their jackets apart. Rufioh had a pair of orange wings on the back of his and Kurloz had a crown on his and Gamzee had three juggling clubs. They were all distinct.

He tossed his jacket onto his bed so he knew where to find it later and headed to the bathroom. This was the most tiresome part of his morning—styling his hair. He squirted a liberal amount of grease into his hair and began combing it out. He was so absorbed he didn't even notice when Eridan burst in and started brushing his teeth—although when he finished brushing and spat out his toothpaste, Cronus noticed _that_.

"Jesus, chief, when did you get in here?"

"About five minutes ago. You better hurry—we gotta leave in like ten minutes."

"Lookin' this good takes time," he called at his younger brother's retreating back.

"Then you should take a little more time!" Eridan shot back.

Cronus almost yelled at him to fuck off, but their parents were still hanging around downstairs and he'd catch hell for cussing in the house. He let it go, thinking Eridan was getting too quick for his own good.

He went back to his room, shrugged on his jacket, patted down his pockets for his keys, wallet, and cigarettes, and called for Eridan, charging down the stairs. "I'm gonna leave without you!" he shouted.

"No, you won't," his mother said, crossing her arms as she looked over at him from the kitchen.

"Aw, jeez, Ma, I'm just tryin' to get him to move faster."

"Don't take that tone with your mother," his father said.

He wasn't going to win this one this way. "Sorry, Ma."

She nodded, seemingly satisfied with his apology. "Have a good day at school, you two. Have enough money for lunch?"

"I got enough," Eridan said. He'd appeared again without Cronus noticing.

He wasn't an idiot, though. "Actually, I need another fifteen cents. They jacked up the price a' lunch again."

Eridan opened his mouth, but Cronus lightly elbowed the back of his head. Eridan shut his mouth.

"Here." His father got up and handed him a dime and a nickel. "Have a good day."

"Thanks, Dad." Cronus pocketed the extra change and headed out the front door with Eridan in tow. Just before the door closed behind them, he heard his father saying, "...don't know why he dresses like a delinquent..."

"Jesus," he muttered. They could only be talking about him—Eridan never warranted that kind of ire from their father. Then again, Eridan dressed like a nerd. Cronus was just grateful he didn't wear a sport coat and bow tie like that Jake English kid. He'd never be able to live it down.

In a way, he was envious of Kurloz. Sure, Gamzee wasn't exactly the brightest cat in the cage, but he was still cool—hence his presence in the Lost Boys. Eridan wouldn't be a greaser in a million years. Cronus wished he had a cooler younger brother. Not as cool as him, of course, but cooler than Eridan.

"We don't have to get any a' your loser friends, do we?" Eridan asked as Cronus went to the driver's side.

"Yeah, we do, actually. We gotta get Rufioh an' _his_ loser brother. Get in the back."

"I'm not ridin' in the back like a first-grader!" Eridan protested.

"If you're gonna act like a first-grader, I'm gonna treat you like one. In the back."

They were right outside of the house. Cronus didn't really have any way to retaliate if Eridan decided to get in the front anyway, but the kid was fifteen, so he didn't really realize it. He got into the back seat behind Cronus and crossed his arms over his chest.

Eridan sulked the whole way over to Rufioh's place, which suited Cronus just fine. He preferred it when his brother stayed quiet. After he honked the horn, Rufioh and his brother Tavros both appeared and practically sprinted down the Nitram family's front walk amid the chorus of the barking of their three hundred or so bulldogs.

Cronus _definitely_ did not envy Rufioh for anything except maybe his dark good looks. His younger brother looked like a wimp, although part of Cronus didn't blame him. Their old man was a serious drunk who had a tendency to smack around both Rufioh and Tavros, and their old lady had died about six years ago, before Cronus had met Rufioh. They were also dirt-poor, meaning Rufioh was just as likely to come to school with his hair unstyled as slicked back. His hair today was the latter, meaning it probably hadn't been too bad of a morning for them. No matter how bad things got for Rufioh, though, Cronus seldom saw him without a smile. He just knew he wouldn't be able to handle being in Rufioh's shoes—he'd lose his marbles.

"Hey, man, how's it going?" Rufioh asked, hopping in the front seat while Tavros slid into the back.

"Great, apart from a return to the bullshit a' school."

"Yeah, but we're seniors now. Probably won't be so bad."

Cronus let out a snort of laughter. "You really think that, man? I gotta say, you're way more optimistic than me."

Rufioh shrugged, flipping up the collar of his jacket. It was different from the other three in that his was brown leather instead of black. Aside from that, he and Cronus were dressed identically down to their black high-tops. He leaned back and threw his arms across the seat back. "I just got hope, man."

Cronus didn't know how he could be so damned optimistic all the time. Not bothering to press the point further, he put his car in gear and headed toward school.

"Sweet wheels, man," Rufioh added after a few moments.

_Oh, yeah._ He was so used to having the car already that he'd forgotten—Rufioh hadn't actually seen it yet. He'd just gotten it in July and called Rufioh to tell him that he had a car in the first place. Cronus had used surprisingly little of his parents' significant money to buy it, a fact he was immensely proud of. He'd worked all summer and the summer before just to get it, and now that he had it, a Chrysler New Yorker two model years ago, he wanted nothing more than to soup it up even more.

"Thanks, man. I can't wait to get her into the shop."

"Why? Gonna take her out drag racing?"

"Nah, I'm gonna _beat_ people drag racin'," he said confidently. He heard Eridan snort with laughter and said, "You tell Ma an' Dad an' I'll kick your ass."

Eridan held up his hands in a placating gesture.

Once at school, Cronus dropped Eridan and Tavros at the front before wheeling around. The moment their brothers left the car, they each pulled out a cigarette and lit up, and Cronus began cruising the back parking lot, hunting for Kurloz's indigo Mainline. It had been their habit the last two years to meet at his car on the first day of school, but this was the first time he'd been able to show up in a car of his own. He'd just given it the paint job he wanted, a deep sparkling purple that would have been a bit flamboyant on anything other than a car, but as it was, it looked sweet, flat-out cherry.

He spotted Kurloz's car and gunned the engine, heading for the parking spot right next to it. Kurloz and Gamzee were sitting on the hood of the Mainline when Cronus pulled up, and Kurloz took one look and nearly lost his shit.

"Hey, motherfucker, you can't—" Then he caught sight of who was driving. "Oh, shit, motherfucker, I didn't see you there! You weren't motherfucking joking—killer wheels!"

"Jesus, Kurly, don't your old lady ever wash your mouth out with soap?" Cronus joked, getting out.

"'Course she does," Rufioh said innocently. "But she stopped after he started smoking it."

Fortunately, both Kurloz and Gamzee found his joke riotously funny and dissolved into insane laughter. His comment had some basis in fact, anyway—the running joke was that both of the Makaras would smoke anything if they could hold a lighter to it long enough.

Kurloz and Gamzee wouldn't be mistaken for anything but brothers, too. They both had the same dark, tangled mass of hair—Kurloz would at least attempt a proper greaser style, but Gamzee's hair had been known to swallow combs with no hope of returning them. They had the same hollow cheeks and dark eyes and insane height—Kurloz was six-foot-four and Gamzee was six-foot-one, an inch taller than Cronus—and gaunt frames, but that was because they were both usually too high to realize they were hungry. Right now, though, Cronus just smelled cigarettes on them. That didn't mean neither of them didn't have a joint stashed for later, but at least for the moment, they were sober.

"Any sign a' the Fuchsia Ladies?" Cronus asked, scanning the parking lot. There were the Captor twins heading inside—he recognized them from last year, so they were sophomores now—and two other cats who were probably brothers, one in a bright-red sweater and the other in a regular black shirt, but no sign of Meenah Peixes's fuchsia Windsor Deluxe or, for that matter, anyone else in her little gang.

"I saw one of the motherfucking Serkets heading inside," Gamzee volunteered. He took a long drag on his cigarette. "Couldn't tell which one. Didn't see anyone else, though."

Kurloz gave a dramatic shrug. "There it motherfucking is. One of the Serkets."

Fine and dandy, in Cronus's opinion. He wasn't interested in either of the Serkets anyway—he'd gotten with Aranea last year and he didn't really feel like chasing after her sister. Damara Megido, too, was old news, as was Porrim Maryam, although she wasn't one of the Fuchsia Ladies. No, if he would be scoring with any of the Fuchsia Ladies, it would either be Roxy Lalonde or Meenah herself, and he would be holding out for Meenah if he had any say.

But there was all year for that. It didn't matter right now if they didn't see the girls until lunch or something. He wasn't really in any hurry to get the school year moving.

"So you gonna motherfucking race her?" Kurloz asked, tapping the hood of Cronus's car.

"Yeah, once I soup up the engine. We'll have to take her to the shop—I didn't wanna start fuckin' with the engine at home, y'know? Plus there's actually cats who know what they're doin' in the school shop at least." Cronus sprawled back onto the grass, staring up at the sky. It was a bright day already and he wished he'd thought to get his sunglasses from the car, but it wasn't so bad yet. Rufioh, Kurloz, and Gamzee continued chatting over him and he closed his eyes, letting himself just enjoy being outside and back with his friends.

It had been a long summer. True, he'd spent most of it working, and part of him missed not being at school already, but he also hadn't been able to see any of the other Lost Boys. Rufioh, he supposed, he could have seen, but he hadn't felt like braving that fucked-up family for very long, and he was pretty sure Rufioh had also gotten a job anyway. The Makaras had been forced to accompany their parents to northern Michigan for some unfathomable reason, though, and so seeing them hadn't even been an option. But it didn't matter. The Lost Boys were back together, a relief. He was finally back with people who actually gave a shit about him instead of his parents, who were a real drag and never did anything but drag him down, and his brother who was just a typical uncool younger brother. It was over.

He heard a bottle being uncapped and felt himself grinning automatically.

"Want a beer, motherfucker?" Kurloz asked. Ever since he'd turned eighteen last December, he'd been the supplier of alcohol, at least until Cronus had turned eighteen two months later. Rufioh would be seventeen until April and Gamzee was still sixteen, but two people buying booze for four had been relatively easy.

"Yeah, chief, hand it over," Cronus said, opening his eyes and sitting up.

Rufioh tossed a bottle over from some unseen compartment in the back seat of Kurloz's Mainline. Cronus caught it easily and popped the top off with his keys. As glad as he was to be back with friends, the actually being at school part really sucked. He didn't know how he'd made it through three previous first days at Lakeside High School sober, but he was glad he didn't have to do it anymore.

The other three had already opened their bottles, so Cronus held it up. "To the seniors a' the Class a' 1956, to the lone junior in our midst, an' to all the chicks who don't know they're gonna bang us yet."

Gamzee nearly spilled his drink, he laughed so hard, and Rufioh mimed wiping a tear from his eye. "Bangarang, brother. For a second there, I thought you were gonna say something sentimental."

"Not a chance."

They knocked their bottles together to a chorus of laughter, and as the first bell rang, warning them to get to homeroom, they tilted the bottles back and chugged them. Cronus finished his in thirty seconds, tossed the empty bottle behind him, and stood up. "Back out here for lunch?"

"You know it," Rufioh said. He rolled his bottle into the parking lot and stood up as well. "Come on, guys. Let's get this over with."

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**I DID SO MUCH RESEARCH FOR THIS FIC ALREADY YOU HAVE NO IDEA.**

**The legal drinking age in 1955 was 18 (and it was until the late 1970s), so "underage drinking" here refers to those characters who are 17 or younger. (BTW, Rufioh's dad is not based on any Nitram interpretation, like most of the parents in this fic!)**


	2. Chapter 2

**I had a lot of great ideas for the Vantas family while writing this chapter. There is a huge family-related drama bomb to be dropped in Kankri's future.**

**Many thanks to obsessed01616, Cucumbermonster4, DarkBlueMahogany, iDreamBig, and nightwingthenightingale for your reviews to the last act!**

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He didn't have to be at school until eight, so when he woke up at six, he sat in bed for a long time with his arms around his knees.

He missed home. This place where they lived now, it wasn't home—not really. He missed his old friends and his old school and his old room. Everything here was unfamiliar, even after he'd had two months to get used to it. Karkat didn't have it as bad as he did, either—his younger brother was just starting high school and would have had to start over at a new school anyway, but he was a junior. All these kids had known each other for at least two years, and here he was, a brand-new face in a sea of students who knew each other.

Finally, though, he rolled out of bed and picked out his clothes. He chose the black pants he normally wore to church and a red dress shirt before deciding he was in need of an extra bit of comfort today. He located his favorite red sweater—it was late August, incredibly warm, but he wanted to wear the sweater anyway—and pulled it over his head. His hair was a mess and he halfheartedly attempted to comb it out, but it was useless. It would take more time than he had to try to straighten it.

"Karkat," he called, pounding on his brother's bedroom door, "are you awake?"

There was music coming from within, some rock-and-roll-sounding music he couldn't identify, leading him to believe that his brother was up, but it was also possible that he was sleeping through his alarm. Either way, Karkat needed to turn off the music in a hurry—their father considered any music not explicitly spiritual to be "Devil's music." "Karkat! I don't intend to hasten you beyond your comfort level, but if we're tardy for our first day of school—"

The door flew open, and Karkat's angry glare met him. He hissed, "Kankri. _Shut the fuck up._"

"Father will hear—"

"He won't if you stop goddamn yelling," Karkat growled.

Kankri pinched the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes. "Your language is offensive this early in the morning," he said testily.

"My _language_ is always fucking offensive to you."

"Your behavior is reminiscent of a ten-year-old who just learned his first curse words."

"Just... give me five fucking minutes to get dressed and I'll be right there, okay? I don't need you hovering over my goddamn shoulder like a moth." Before Kankri could answer, his brother closed the door. He didn't slam it, of course—loud noises like doors slamming would annoy their father, and Kankri had seen enough of Reverend Karter S. Vantas at full rage during his sermons to know that any lectures toward his sons would be unpleasant.

Kankri sighed and went to the kitchen where his mother was just pulling a dish of pancakes from the oven to keep them warm. "Good morning, Kankri," she said pleasantly.

"Good morning, Mother."

"Go sit down and I'll bring you some breakfast. Is your brother awake?"

"Yes, Mother." He sat down, briefly contemplating telling her about Karkat's new habit of cursing, but he decided against it. It would no doubt come back to his father, and Reverend Vantas wasn't the most understanding of souls. As offended as Kankri was by his brother's language, he disliked calling down his father's wrath.

"Good. I don't want either of you late on your first day."

Kankri didn't answer. He stared at the plate in front of him, thinking back to Louisiana and how he wished they were still there. Ohio wasn't bad, of course—in terms of weather, the summer at least was comparable. But he missed his old friends, as few and far between as they were, and he missed his old school.

But going back wasn't an option. His father had already begun to lead a new congregation, and it looked like Karkat would be graduating from Lakeside High School in four years' time. Kankri wondered where he would be at that point. It was his father's fondest hope that one or even both of his sons would follow him into the ministry, but Kankri wasn't sure it was the right choice for him. He believed, of course, and he would never renounce any of his father's teachings, but he didn't feel called to do the same thing.

He almost laughed at the idea of Karkat becoming a reverend himself. There was no way he would ever follow their father's example.

"Are you alright, dear?" his mother asked, patting his hair.

He blinked and realized she'd already served him. He'd been so lost in thought that he hadn't noticed. "Of course, Mother. Forgive me. I was just... thinking."

"I know it's been hard on you. It's very different up here. But if you keep your faith, I'm certain you'll triumph over this obstacle," she added with a reassuring smile. "You're a strong young man."

Kankri nodded. "Of course, Mother."

Karkat appeared in the kitchen a few minutes later, buttoning up a black shirt. He, too, hadn't bothered to comb his hair, but whereas Kankri would have at least attempted it had he been told, Karkat flat-out refused.

"Good morning, Karkat," their mother said as he sat down next to Kankri, at the foot of the table.

"Morning, Mom."

She glanced worriedly at the clock on the wall. "You're not going to have much time to eat, I'm afraid. Just eat what you can, alright, dear?"

Karkat shrugged in apathy and Mrs. Vantas put two pancakes on his plate.

"Where's Father?" Kankri asked suddenly, realizing his place at the head of the table was empty.

"He had an emergency this morning."

He vaguely recalled the phone ringing before six, half-waking him. "Problem?"

"One of the older women in the congregation went to the hospital last night. He went over for spiritual assistance."

That sounded like his father, all right. He felt guilty for the surge of relief that his father wasn't there.

After a few more minutes of silent chewing, she looked up at the clock again. "Just leave your plates there. I'll wash the dishes later." Their mother pulled two brown bags out of the refrigerator as Kankri and Karkat stood up. "Here are your lunches. Be careful on your way to school. You remember how to get there, right?"

Their father had driven them the way to school every other day nearly all summer. Of course they remembered how to get there. "Yes, Mother."

"Good. Have a blessed day."

Kankri kissed her goodbye. "You, too, Mother." Karkat followed suit, and the two of them picked up their lunches and headed out the front door.

"At least Dad wasn't there," Karkat muttered as soon as they'd crossed the street. "I don't need to hear his lecture on the evils of public high schools again."

"It'll be different," Kankri said quietly. "I feel rather out-of-place without a uniform. Don't you?"

"A little. But I'm also really looking forward to being able to wear whatever I want to school."

Kankri scoffed. "Mother and Father won't let you wear 'whatever you want.' You know that."

"Don't be such a killjoy."

The two of them continued bickering until they found themselves in front of Lakeside High School. "There's a lot of cars in the parking lot," Kankri observed. "How many teachers do they _have_ here?"

"Uh, look. There's teenagers getting out of the cars. I'm pretty sure those are students' cars."

"Students?" He looked closer, eyeing one dark-pink car that had four girls piling out of it. "Oh. You're right."

"Obviously. Look, let's not go in the front door," Karkat added. "Side door. That way, we won't get stared at."

"We're bound to be stared at anyway. I don't see what good using a different door will do," Kankri argued, but he followed Kankri toward the rear entrance, weaving through the small mob of students. He glanced to his left and locked eyes momentarily with a boy with his dark hair slicked back and wearing a white T-shirt, a leather jacket, and blue jeans cuffed at the tops of his shoes. _Oh, no._ Apparently there were greasers here, too. They'd caused him problems at his old high school, and he'd hoped that maybe the greaser phenomenon was isolated to the Louisiana area, but apparently it wasn't. He tried to look smaller, suddenly acutely aware of his bright-red sweater, and prayed he avoided notice.

Fortunately, the greaser turned around to focus on three of his friends, all of whom were wearing leather jackets as well. Before Kankri could look away, he registered the embroidery on the back of the jacket. _The Lost Boys._ Well. _That_ certainly seemed like a fitting name. Lost boys indeed.

Karkat slipped inside a few seconds before him, but no one else followed them. The hallways seemed fairly empty, considering the number of students milling around outside. "We need to find the main office," Kankri said. "Father said they had our schedules there."

"Why couldn't they have just fucking mailed the damn things?" Karkat grumbled.

"Stop it, Karkat. Excuse me," he added, flagging down a boy in a yellow shirt. "Where's the main office?"

The boy looked him over and grinned. His teeth looked unusually sharp, but maybe that was because they were wired with braces. "Aww, poor freshmen. It's that way," he said with a slight lisp and a finger pointed straight ahead of them.

"I'm not a freshman," Kankri corrected him. He'd already dealt with one year as a freshman—he wouldn't be mistaken for one again, even if he did happen to still _look_ like one. Although he was still fairly short, his father was five-foot-ten, and he hoped he still had some growing left in him.

"You're not? I've never seen you here before."

"My family moved here from Louisiana this summer. I'm a junior, actually, but my brother—"

"Oh, _shit_, you're the preacher's kids!" Something about that seemed to amuse the other boy, and he covered his mouth to hide his grin. "Welcome to Lakeside! See you around!" Without another word, he hurried away.

"What... what was that?"

"Fucking idiot," Karkat muttered. "I do _not_ want to be known as 'the preacher's son' everywhere I fucking go from now on."

"I admit, it eliminates a fair bit of anonymity I was hoping to have, at least for the first few days. Everyone will expect us to behave perfectly."

"Which I'm sure will be no fucking problem for _you_. Me, on the other hand..."

Kankri closed his eyes and shook his head as the bell rang. "Let's hurry and find the office. We don't have much time to waste anymore."

But the first bell had opened the floodgates, and students poured into the building. They fought the current of bodies pushing them away from the office until, just seconds before the second bell rang, they arrived, looking decidedly worse for the wear.

"Can I help you?" said a stern-looking man behind the front desk. The name plate in front of him read _A. Renendez_, so Kankri squared his shoulders.

"Yes, Mr. Renendez. My name is Kankri Vantas, and this is my brother Karkat. We're—well, _I'm_ a transfer student; it's Karkat's first high school. We were just—"

"Oh, Reverend Karter's kids. We've been expecting you, actually."

Next to him, Karkat began grumbling under his breath about being "the fucking preacher's kids" yet again. Kankri could kind of understand his frustration, but he didn't understand what was so inherently wrong with being a child of a preacher. If anything, they were more fortunate than their peers.

"Here are your schedules. Your homeroom is Room 413 with Ms. Mendicant," Renendez said, looking at Kankri, "and Karkat, you're in 826 with Mr. Valence. Just follow the numbers—you'll find your way."

And with that, they were pushed back out into the crush of students, and Kankri had to grab his brother's collar to keep him from being yanked away by the current. "The 600 classrooms are right here," he murmured, glancing down the nearest corridor. They had a fifty-fifty chance of getting it right the first time, assuming the hallways were numbered logically.

Or he could try to flag down another student and hope he got more help.

That didn't seem likely to happen, though. The longer he hovered, the more hurried-looking the others seemed to be. A few moments later, the second bell rang, and Kankri went into panic mode. Neither he nor Karkat were where they needed to be and the hallways were emptying of people and doors were slamming shut and a chorus of footfalls were heading toward them from behind, accompanied by excited whooping and Kankri spun around just in time to see the greasers from earlier—all four of them—charging down the hallway. His heart pounded and he pressed himself against the wall to get out of their way, unable to suppress the tremor of fear that ran through him. All of them were bigger than him, and the one with the brown jacket actually had the tips of his hair colored _red_, and how was that allowed here? And the other two with the wide leers—something about them seemed a little off, but Kankri didn't have the mental capacity to try to figure it out right now, not with the greasers bearing down.

And then all of a sudden, with the first one, the one with the black jacket with the intricate design on the back, grinning at him and turning away, they vanished, leaving the bitter stench of beer behind them. Three of them—the first greaser, the one with red in his hair, and the taller of the crazy-looking ones—darted off to the right, and the other one went left. Two doors slammed from the hallway to the right, and then another to the left, and Kankri was left standing there in the deserted hallway, praying none of them were juniors, or at least in his homeroom.

"Okay, Karkat, we should find our classrooms now." He waited a beat and looked around. "Karkat?"

But the hallway really _was_ empty. Karkat had vanished, too. "Okay," he murmured. "Okay. He probably found his classroom already." But where had he even gone?

It didn't matter. He'd find his brother later. He needed to find his homeroom now. He glanced nervously toward the hallway the trio of greasers had disappeared down and turned left, away from it. He would continue hoping until it was foolish to continue doing so anymore.

When the next hallway he passed started with classroom 510, he breathed a sigh of relief. He was going in the right direction after all. His pace quickened and he arrived in the 400 wing and began scanning for 413. Five seconds later, he slipped through the door as quietly as he could and saw the only seat open—right in the middle, behind a girl with a violently-pink jacket reading _The Fuchsia Ladies_ across the back.

_Good enough._ He sat down and crossed his arms over his chest, allowing his heart rate to drop.

Not a greaser in sight.

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**What he didn't see was that Gamzee is, in fact, in the back of the classroom. OOPS.**

**I kind of started adding in the exiles... I couldn't resist.**


	3. Chapter 3

**Oh, Jesus. In case you haven't noticed, I'm trying to make all the chapters for this fic at least 2,500 words (in previous fics, the baseline was 2,000). Eventually, I want to work my way to 3,000. Also, I had to invent a new Strider, who acts as guardian!Bro, so there are now three Striders: Dack (the oldest; he's 23), Dirk (17), and Dave (15). (If Dack played Sburb, his title would be Seer of Void.)**

**Anyway, thank you so much to DarkBlueMahogany, Nana Loves Greasers, Cucumbermonster4, can we not, and iDreamBig for your reviews to the last chapter!**

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"Hey!"

Dave jolted awake, fumbling automatically for his sunglasses and sliding them on his face. Outside his room, his brother pounded on the door, the cause of his abrupt return to consciousness. He mumbled something that was supposed to be, "What's going on?" but came out as more of a, "Huh?"

"Let's go!" Dirk called through the door again. "You got five minutes, bro! We gotta go get Harley!"

"Shit," Dave muttered. He threw the covers off his bed and stumbled toward his closet, grabbing the first shirt he could find and jumping into a pair of jeans. He straightened his sunglasses and shrugged into his leather jacket, hunting for his shoes. Once he'd tied the red high-tops, he dashed out of his room, ducking under Dirk's swinging fist heading right for his nose, and skidded into the kitchen.

"Catch!" Dack, his oldest brother, called, tossing a piece of toast into the air and half-batting, half-slicing it toward him with one of his hundreds of katanas. Their tiny house was a deathtrap with all the sharp implements they had laying around, but Dave was used to navigating it by now.

He caught the now-separate pieces of toast and stuck them in his mouth. Dack grinned and set the katana up on the counter, pushing his own glasses farther up the bridge of his nose. "Nice one. You guys taking off soon?"

"Now, actually." Dirk's voice came out of nowhere, but Dave didn't jump. If he gave any indication that he was anything but on his guard at all times, Dack and Dirk wouldn't let up on him. "Keys."

"Catch." Dack pulled the keys to his Monterey out of nowhere, picked up his katana, tossed the keys up in the air, and batted them toward Dirk with the flat of the blade. Dirk caught them, elbowed the back of Dave's head, and said, "Let's get Harley."

Dack called after them, "If you put so much as a scratch on that car, I'll pull your teeth out through your ass!"

"Eat me!" Dirk yelled back, slamming the front door behind Dave. "Hope you got everything you need, little man," he added, popping up the collar on his own leather jacket, "'cause we're not going back in there until after school."

"Come on, bro, we can't skip a few classes?"

"Not this year, bro." Just to spite Dack, Dave was sure, Dirk slid across the hood of the Monterey, the chain on his wallet scraping harmlessly against the metal. "Gotta graduate. Senior, baby."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah." Dave dropped into the passenger's seat and crossed his arms, suppressing a sigh. Dirk was a senior this year and Dack had graduated just over five years ago, but Dave was only a sophomore. He could appreciate Dirk's motivation to graduate from Lakeside High School and not come back, but that just meant that if (and when) he cut classes, it would be with Harley. Which wasn't bad, truth be told, but Dack wouldn't let him drive the car without either him or Dirk there as well, and Dirk wouldn't give him the keys during the day, so he'd probably be stuck under the bleachers. That wasn't exactly how he wanted to spend his school days, but he reminded himself it was only for a year. Next year, he'd drive himself and Harley to school and he would have control of the car during the day.

They pulled up in front of Harley's house ten minutes later. Fortunately, she'd seen them coming and ran out the front door with her book bag bouncing on her shoulder and her long hair streaming behind her. Her full name was actually Jade Harley, but they called her by her last name since it sounded better. She was a generally cool chick, despite her buck teeth and round glasses. She'd been hanging out with Dave for as long as he could remember and, surprisingly, was one of the few people—besides his brothers—that he could tolerate for more than ten minutes. He scooted his seat forward and popped open the door to let her slide into the backseat. "Morning, Striders!"

"Hey, Harley. Your old man threaten to shoot us again?" Dirk asked, pulling away from the curb.

He wasn't joking about the "old man" part. Harley lived with her grandfather, not her parents. Dave didn't know the details, which was a bit of a surprise considering how long they'd known each other, but to his recollection, she'd never lived with her parents. Her grandfather had always been her guardian.

"Well, he had his rifle, but he didn't actually _say_ he'd shoot you today. I think he's getting used to you."

"It's not like it's been ten years or anything," Dave muttered.

"Closer to thirteen, silly," Harley said, swatting at his shoulder.

"Oh, three years, big deal."

Dirk smirked and rolled down his window. "Feel like driving past some upperclass fucks?"

"I thought you wanted to get to school," Dave pointed out.

Dirk checked his watch. "Eh. We got time."

"We have ten minutes to make it to school before the first bell," Jade said, waving her own watch as proof.

"Alright, fine. After school, though."

"That'll give us time to collect rocks," Dave joked.

"Good point." Dirk gunned the engine and they sped up.

Dave leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. He heard movement in the backseat but didn't think anything of it until someone snatched his sunglasses off his face—or tried to, anyway. Automatically, his hand shot up and his fingers wrapped around a wrist. Harley's wrist. There was no way that bony arm belonged to Dirk. "Don't touch the shades," Dave said, but his voice lacked conviction. If it was anyone but Harley or one of his brothers, he would have at least attempted to break their arm, but he knew her. She was harmlessly fucking with him, and their thirteen years of friendship had entitled her to that.

As Dirk pulled into a parking space at school (in the middle of fucking nowhere, since all the good spots had been taken already), Dave ratcheted his seat fully up so Harley would be able to get out. He opened his door and a bell rang, echoing through the nearly-deserted parking lot and school lawns.

"We're late," Harley announced, hopping to the ground. "That was the second bell."

Dirk rubbed the bridge of his nose under his own sunglasses. Despite his frankly-terrifying driving habits, they still hadn't made it on time. "It's the first day," he muttered. "No one's gonna notice a few punks walking in late."

Harley slung her bag over her shoulder as they walked toward the building and gently tugged her hair out from where it was pinned between the bag's strap and the leather of her jacket. "Too bad we won't have the same homeroom," she said to Dave.

"Yeah." It would have been nice to have a friend with him, but last year had driven home the futility of that hope. He headed off in the direction of his homeroom and went inside, not bothering for subtlety. He was already late. There was no point in trying to sneak in.

* * *

"Nice to see you've joined us. Mr. Strider, I presume?" the teacher said, a stern-looking woman with an hourglass figure and a black dress. Everyone at school called her Snowman because she was cold and it was easier to say than Snowwoman. Now that he was thinking about it, he realized he couldn't remember her real name.

"That's me," Dave confirmed.

"Only three minutes late."

"I know—not bad, right?" He slid into the first open seat he could find, next to a girl whose name he vaguely recalled started with an _F_.

"I hope you're not planning to make it a habit, Mr. Strider." Snowman's voice could have frozen over hell. It went beyond a mere chill—she sounded dangerous, angry. Dave knew better than most that a cold rage was far worse than a hot one. Normally, he wouldn't hesitate to push a teacher's buttons, but it _was_ only the first day of school, and he was still a little lethargic from being woken up sooner than he would have liked; he wasn't in full form for a good old-fashioned debate with this broad. Besides, he also didn't feel like being the first person to get sent to detention this year.

So Dave leaned back in his seat. "Don't worry about me, teach. I'll be a perfect angel."

A chorus of snickers erupted, including from the girl next to him, who hid her face behind her hair. He couldn't hold back a self-satisfied smirk.

"Mr. Strider, if you say one more word in this classroom today, I will give you detention. Is that understood?"

He didn't want to test her limits today. Maybe tomorrow. He nodded.

"And take off the damn sunglasses."

Dave cocked his head to the side. _You sure about that, teach?_ All of the teachers last year had been a little unnerved by his stare and allowed him to keep his sunglasses on. Dirk and Dack had the same freaky eye thing, too—it was a family trait, just like their sunglasses. On top of that, he was sitting right in front at the moment.

"Take them off," Snowman repeated.

Dave raised his hand to the wire frames, keeping his eyes fixed dramatically on Snowman as he took the sunglasses off. He set them carefully on his desk and continued to stare unblinkingly at her, privately enjoying the way her eyes widened slightly as she finally saw.

His pupils, he was sure, were constricted, being unused to natural light due to the sunglasses. His irises would be nice and noticeable, all blood red and creepy. In his peripherals, he saw a few of his classmates leaning in to get a look at what had made Snowman go slightly pale, but he kept his eyes locked on her.

A muscle in her jaw twitched. She swallowed, the motion almost imperceptible. "Put your sunglasses back on, Strider," she hissed.

_That's what I thought._ Dave slid his sunglasses back on and closed his eyes for a few moments. As soon as humanly possible, he was dragging either Dirk or Harley out of their classes and shooting the shit under the bleachers because he could _not_ spend the whole year this way.

Fortunately, homeroom was only twenty minutes long. The bell rang and the sophomores filtered out and to their new lockers. Dave already spun his lock around his finger as he popped open number 1206. It had a few tiny scraps of paper from last year when whatever student had owned this locker previously hadn't quite cleaned it out fully, but that didn't bother him. He didn't have anything to put in here right now anyway. At the end of the day, it would be filled with books, but right now, it was empty.

He briefly considered climbing in, but he'd barely fit last year and his shoulders were broader now. There was no way he'd fit this time.

Two greasers—the Lost Boys, they called themselves—charged down the hall, completely ignoring him. They tended to harass a lot of people, of course. Cronus, who seemed to be the leader (although the three oldest ones seemed like they didn't really take orders from either of the others; it was only the youngest one, the junior, the younger brother of one of the others, who just kind of followed along), particularly liked to taunt one of the other sophomores. One of the Captor twins. Dave could never quite figure out which one was which, but he knew that Cronus only bullied one of them, not the other, which struck Dave as a little odd because both of the twins had the same speech problem and fucked-up teeth. The twins were identical in every way except their hair.

But Dave and Dirk had never called down greaser ire. The Lost Boys left them alone for whatever reason. The Striders weren't greasers themselves, although they had a lot in common with them (not the greasers _here_ of course, because all but the one with red in his hair were actually rich, upperclass fuckwads who didn't have to worry about their damn cars breaking down every other week). The Striders could take care of themselves, just like the greasers, and they stuck together. The only thing he could think of that separated them from greasers was their hair. Dave and his brothers did not worry in the slightest about slicking their hair back or forward or any which way.

Harley was a pretty big difference, too. Greasers typically only hung out with girls they planned to fuck or were already fucking. Harley wasn't one of the girls who had a few other girlfriends and started their own rival clique of whatever the female version of a greaser was. Harley was actually one of them.

Her grandpa was pretty rich, one of the reasons he was able to afford that two-story house and all those guns, but he'd taught Harley how to shoot at a young age and she was a crack shot by now. Besides, she didn't let her money control her, unlike that Cronus Ampora asshole and his friends and their pretentious embroidered jackets.

Dave involuntarily slammed his locker shut. He needed to just ignore them. At the end of the year, three would be gone, and only the junior would be left. That one barely had a functioning brain cell in his head, so he didn't have much to worry about.

He stalked off toward his first class, which he already knew he didn't have with Harley. They only shared lunch and sixth-hour PE, which was still better than what he shared with Dirk, which was nothing. Dirk had fifth-hour lunch, the unfortunate fuck, which meant he'd be starving by lunch time.

He went right for the back of the classroom in first-hour math. The last thing he wanted was to be front and center again, not after homeroom. This teacher probably wouldn't make him take off his glasses, though. He'd already had a class with her last year and she knew about his eyes. For once, he was grateful to have a teacher he knew already.

The bell rang and he found himself staring at the back of the head of the boy in front of him. There wasn't anything particularly _fascinating_ about the back of this head—the boy's hair was dark brown and a little longer than normal, with wisps that wrapped around and behind his ears and a tuft near the top that wouldn't lie flat, as if there was a breeze going through it. Dave tilted his head to the side, wondering if the boy had a cowlick or if he just hadn't combed his hair before coming to school.

The teacher spoke calmly about classroom rules as if they weren't the same in every classroom while she dropped stacks of books on the first desk of every row. One by one, they were passed back until the boy in front of Dave had two books. The boy twisted in his seat, dropped the last book on Dave's desk, and grinned at him.

"Hey, man. Nice shades. Think she's gonna make you take them off?"

Dave shook his head numbly, grateful again for the sunglasses. Now, at least, the widening of his eyes wouldn't be noticed. He wasn't quite sure why it seemed like the other boy had blue eyes so pale they could see right through him, especially magnified in those glasses he wore, but that thought made him squirm.

He pushed his sunglasses firmly up the bridge of his nose and sat back.

* * *

**I didn't want to do this, but there will be more Striders in the next chapter (at least at the beginning). As it turns out, DirkJake is established canon at this point in the story (not that anyone knows about it). So brace for some smuttiness (already!).**


	4. Chapter 4

**So much fucking Dirk/Jake. I'm not even close to being sorry. (Also others, a little bit, but the Dirk/Jake is the most important.)**

**Many thanks to iDreamBig, SilverEnderwolf, Cucumbermonster4, can we not, and DarkBlueMahogany for your reviews to the last chapter!**

* * *

The only time Dirk ever took off his sunglasses when he wasn't at home was when he was in the bathroom at school and he was positive no one else was around. His eyes tended to freak people out a bit, except for Dave and Dack, of course. They didn't have much room to talk in that department—Dave's eyes were red and Dack's were yellow. Dirk's eyes could have almost passed for a light brown until you looked closely and saw they were quite obviously orange.

He avoided his own gaze even though he was wearing his sunglasses and waited casually for the bathroom to empty out. He was sure it would soon—there was only about twenty-five seconds until the second bell. He wouldn't be leaving, though. Not right away. He was waiting for someone.

The second bell rang and Dirk stayed put until everyone else had left. He began counting down to himself from sixty, telling himself that if that door didn't open by the time he reached zero, he would just leave. He couldn't wait around all morning.

He kept his eyes locked on the door. When he'd gotten to seventeen, the door swung open and a junior in a bow tie with a bag over his shoulder strolled in.

Dirk felt himself smiling automatically. The junior smoothed back his messy hair and flashed a shy, tentative smile back at him, biting on his lip for a moment. "Hey, Dirk."

"Hey, Jake. I... I wasn't sure you were going to be here." As he spoke, Jake set his book bag down and closed the bathroom door.

"Why wouldn't I?" he asked, closing the gap between them until he was only a few feet away.

Dirk's heart rate picked up slightly, but he managed to keep his voice level. "Just... it's been a long summer. I thought maybe you'd... I don't know, get tired of me or something."

Jake's smile widened a little and he put his hand up to cup Dirk's cheek. "No way. I really missed you."

"Good. I missed you, too."

Jake stood on his tiptoes to press his lips gently to Dirk's, and the senior felt his heart skip a beat and his stomach start turning pleasantly and his face getting warm, and he wound his arms around Jake's waist. He'd missed this, being close to Jake and seeing him every day. It was actually the main reason he'd been secretly looking forward to school starting back up—although he'd also been terrified because, for a nerd, Jake was really attractive and he could have easily found someone else over the summer or just decided he didn't want anything to do with Dirk anymore.

That prospect scared him more than anything. Jake could just walk away, but Dirk couldn't—not if he wanted to remain intact. He couldn't explain it, but he just knew nothing would be the same if Jake left. It would hurt too much.

And he knew, if anything, it would be Jake who would end it, not him.

A burst of laughter echoed in the hallway outside the bathroom and they broke apart, Jake's violently green eyes widening. "Are we alone in here?" he whispered.

Dirk nodded silently and tugged him into the closest stall and locked it. Chest to chest, they waited, neither of them daring to breathe until a full ten seconds passed without anyone bursting in on them. "I think we're in the clear," Dirk murmured.

Jake nodded, reached up, and gently slid the senior's sunglasses off. Dirk closed his eyes until Jake had folded up the glasses and hung them from Dirk's shirt. Only then did he open his eyes, still self-conscious of them around Jake after all this time.

Eight months. It had been eight months since all this started. It had been an accident, a total accident, but it had still somehow led to this, clandestine moments stolen in bathrooms between classes, feigned study sessions (Jake being an ultra-nerd had its benefits; they'd had two classes together last year and had excuses to study together) at Jake's house while his deaf grandmother remained oblivious downstairs (and that was fortunate because no matter how much he tried to keep his voice down, Dirk was loud) and there was no way in hell they'd get any amount of privacy at the Strider house. Not with Dack and Dave strifing everywhere.

In eight months, it wasn't enough, not by a long shot, but it was all they had.

But Jake just smiled up at him and kissed him again, just as lightly and just as sweetly as before. He was used to Dirk's eyes. He would tell him that they were unique, they made him stand out.

Dirk closed his eyes, winding his arms back around Jake and letting him melt into the kiss. He'd missed Jake so much—the summer hadn't allowed a single moment for them to see each other, not with Jake and his grandmother in South America from the middle of June to just two weeks ago. He'd been craving this for two and a half months now.

A dull thud sounded and Jake let out an, _"Oof,"_ somehow registering in his head, and he realized that he'd pushed Jake against the wall of the bathroom stall. The junior wasn't complaining, though—Dirk felt his smile widen against his lips as he brought a hand up to ruffle through Dirk's short blond hair.

They'd just settled into a comfortable rhythm when the bathroom door banged open.

_Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit—!_ They froze, breaking the kiss, and Jake put his index finger to his lips and pointed away from the stall door, toward the wall with the toilet.

Dirk nodded once and they moved silently. He climbed on top of the toilet and perched on the tank, allowing Jake to actually sit on the seat. He'd just sat down when there came the sound of something scraping across the floor and whoever had just walked in called, "Uh, is this someone's bag?"

Jake's face contorted in aggravation and he smacked his forehead. "Y-yeah, that's mine. Can you just leave it there? I'm... a little busy right now."

"Yeah, sure." There was an awkward silence for a moment until the mystery student—Dirk didn't recognize his voice—shuffled over to a urinal, unzipped his pants, and started peeing. Dirk closed his eyes and leaned back, automatically running his fingers through Jake's dark hair. The shorter boy let out a soft sigh and leaned into Dirk, his head resting on Dirk's stomach.

It seemed to take hours for the other student to finish and wash his hands and _leave_, but once the door banged shut behind him, Jake leaped up and darted out of the cubicle. He brought his bag back, closed the stall door, and went right back to Dirk, who'd finally hopped off the tank.

"That was a close—" he started, but Jake cut him off with another kiss.

Dirk couldn't help smiling. More than anything, that had reassured him that Jake really _had_ missed him.

* * *

"I need to be way more drunk for this," Rufioh muttered under their science teacher's talking, his head resting in the palm of his right hand with his arm on the lab table.

"Fuckin' agreed," Cronus answered.

"Are you going to deal or are you just going to shuffle all class long?" Damara said, surreptitiously elbowing Meenah in the ribs.

Meenah rolled her eyes, set the deck of cards down on the lab table, and shrugged out of her jacket. She could tell that Cronus and Rufioh were delighted to have a couple of the Fuchsia Ladies in their science class, and she was pleased that she had three classmates who weren't total assholes (only partly, in Cronus's case—at least Rufioh seemed genuinely nice most of the time). Damara was pretty thrilled, too, since she had a _huge_ crush on Rufioh and talked about him nearly nonstop. Out of necessity, the four of them had teamed up, and altogether, it wasn't a bad arrangement.

For all the flaws in his personality, Meenah had to admit that Cronus was pretty smart, and his smile bordered on knee-melting when it wasn't forced. He was also a decent enough poker player to give her a run for her considerable money, and she liked a challenge. "Way _more_ drunk?" she asked Rufioh. "Implyin' that you're already drunk?"

Rufioh flashed her that lazy grin that had Damara swooning. "Little bit, doll. One of the benefits of friends who're eighteen already."

If she didn't know Rufioh better—and she knew him fairly well, considering they'd been classmates for four years and hung out with the same type of people—she would be certain he was flirting with her. But she _did_ know him, and she knew that he actually didn't realize he was hot and just about everything he said could be construed as flirting. And he _was_ hot. It was actually kind of infuriating, although she wasn't about to tell him that. She also wasn't about to flirt with him, either—he wasn't her type, and he was dirt-poor to boot.

Cronus sniggered behind his hand.

"Yeah, _whale_, wait 'til the buzz wears off an' you're down here with the rest of us," Meenah said.

"Then we go out to Kurloz's car an' repeat the process," Cronus said lazily. "Rufi, you see how much more he had?"

Rufioh half-shrugged. "Enough to make it through the day. Well, unless Gamzee decides to get hammered. He could probably drink all that."

"He better not. Kid's sixteen—s'not so bad if one a' us gets caught drunk, but him? We're gonna all get in trouble," Cronus pointed out.

"Like it'll be so much better for me? I'm only seventeen," Rufioh said.

Meenah rolled her eyes and began dealing. "Alright, _gills_ and _buoys_, the name of the game is poker, five-card draw. We'll play three hands to warm up an' then we'll start bettin' cash. Everyone got the dough?"

"Yeah, I got like..." Cronus rubbed his eyes, thinking. "Four or five bucks?"

"I have sixty cents," Rufioh muttered. He dumped a small pile of change onto the table. "Wait, no, forty-five cents. I need to buy lunch."

"I got your lunch, chief, don't worry about it," Cronus said, clapping him on the shoulder.

"What about you, doll?" Rufioh asked Damara.

She blushed deeply at the nickname, but Meenah nearly groaned. He called every girl he talked to "doll." She hoped Damara wasn't misconstruing what he was saying.

"I have about fifty cents. I have to save my own lunch money."

"_Whale_, you all _minnow_ I got cash on hand. So let's do this." Meenah gave the cards one last, quick shuffle and set the deck in front of Damara. "Cut."

Damara cut the deck into three piles and stacked them back up again. Once she was finished, Meenah took the deck and started dealing one card at a time, Rufioh to Cronus to Damara and then to herself. She finished dealing and set the cards on the lab table while everyone else checked their hands.

Rufioh scowled, picked out three cards from his hand, and grabbed three more from the deck. Cronus's expression was unreadable as he replaced three of his own cards. Damara only switched two, looking slightly smug.

Meenah scratched the back of her head. She had the queen of clubs, the eight of hearts, the seven and six of diamonds, and the three of clubs. The six through eight would give her a good chance of getting a straight, although she would have preferred it if they were all of the same suit. _Oh, whale._ She relinquished the queen and three of clubs and drew two more cards. _Better._ It wasn't quite what she wanted—the eight of spades and seven of hearts—but two pairs were better than nothing.

Apparently, it was better than what Cronus had, too, because he groaned quietly and set his forehead on the table.

"Pair of tens," Rufioh said, showing off the tens of hearts and clubs.

"It wanted to be a straight. Damn it, it _tried_ to be a straight. But I got nothin'," Cronus said. "Fuckin' _nothin'_."

"Pair of jacks," Damara announced. She set her cards on the table—among the jacks of diamonds and spades, there was also the queen of diamonds, the king of spades, and the three of spades.

"_Whale_ I just blew all you suckas out of the water. Two pair." Meenah set her cards down and smirked.

"Good thing we're not playin' for money yet," Cronus said. "I get the feelin' that today's just not my fuckin' day. You chicks are gonna clean me out."

Meenah smirked and gathered up all the cards to begin shuffling them again. "A little sobriety goes a long way, angelfish."

At "angelfish," Cronus started smirking back. Meenah could already see where this was going—she and Roxy were the only two in the Fuchsia Ladies that Cronus hadn't gotten with, and she expected he would be going after one of them this year. From the looks of it, he was angling for her—which she also expected because Roxy, while being cool and actually the smartest person Meenah knew, was a total lush and generally made really stupid choices. Meenah was by far the superior choice.

She rolled around that prospect in her head, thinking about going with him, and decided she wasn't going to reject the possibility outright. The odds of her finding better prospects this year were slim, and besides, everyone knew the Amporas were loaded. He was pretty attractive for an asshole, he was rich, and from what Damara and Aranea had told her, he wasn't too bad in bed.

But there was the car thing. She did _not_ want to be the one picking him up and driving him around. That would be a deal-breaker. "Hey, doo_fish_, when are you plannin' on not bummin' rides from Makara _anemone_more?"

Cronus raised an eyebrow, still smirking. "Who said I'm still bummin' a ride from him, darlin'? I got a set a' wheels over the summer."

"Oh, _reel_ly? What did you get?"

Cronus's smirk widened. "Oh, a New Yorker. Convertible. A '54, but still."

"Oh, shit, man, is it that New Yorker with the out_ray_geous purple paint job?"

He straightened up and smoothed his hair back. "Yeah, that's her. You saw her?"

"Yeah, next to Makara's piece of shit," she laughed, but inside, she was relieved. _Not bad._ Now that that last little detail had been cleared up, she was feeling better about the prospect of going with him.

"Can you quit it with the flirting and deal again?" Damara said lightly, winding a few strands of her long, dark hair around her fingers. "I kind of want to get back on kicking their asses."

Meenah would have given her hell for even insinuating she was flirting with the likes of Cronus Ampora, except she was. She also felt like wringing as much money as possible from him and watching him practically start to salivate from being dominated.

Drunk Cronus was actually a lot of fun to be around, she reflected. She let him cut the deck this time since he'd lost the last hand, and then she began dealing again.

* * *

**I had this idea of Dirk and Jake fucking in the bathroom but neither of them makes it a habit of carrying around lube and besides, if they thought nearly getting caught macking on each other was bad, imagine how much worse it would be if someone caught them in flagrante. Yeah, bad juju.**

**Meenah's fish puns were fun.**


	5. Chapter 5

***ALERT: I HAVE A TUMBLR OKAY THE LINK IS ON MY MAIN PAGE APPARENTLY PEOPLE ARE LOOKING FOR ME AND ARE SURPRISED ON TUMBLR WHEN THEY FIND ME LIKE THEY DIDN'T KNOW WHERE I WAS OR SOMETHING ? MY URL IS ERIDAYUMAMPORA OKAY***

**I started writing chapter 5 and then realized it was chapter 6, so I had to start over with a completely different chapter omg. So I have about 700 words of chapter 6 written already.**

**Many thanks to iDreamBig, VioletOkamiMoon, can we not, Cucumbermonster4, YaoiOverlord, and SilverEnderwolf for your reviews to chapter 4!**

* * *

Kankri didn't like the idea of having a different lunch hour than Karkat, but that was how most of the junior and senior class schedules were set up, with lunch after the freshmen and sophomores. The only good thing about it was that Porrim Maryam, whose father was good friends with Kankri's father, had decided to take him under her proverbial wing and watch out for him, at least until he found his niche. That meant that the moment he wandered into the cafeteria, she was sprinting over to him with her own tray.

"Kankri! There you are! I've been looking for you all morning!"

He knew they probably wouldn't have any classes together since she was a senior—except for debate, but she'd apparently taken that class the year before—but it was still nice to know that someone had been keeping an eye out for him. "I'm afraid I had some difficulties this morning. Karkat insisted on taking a side entrance into the building and we couldn't find the office until homeroom had already started and then there were these _greasers_ who ran through the hallways like wild animals and—"

"Greasers? You mean the Lost Boys?"

"I believe that was what was emblazoned on their jackets, yes."

Porrim let out a resigned sort of laugh. "They're a real trip. They're not as bad as they look, trust me—just don't piss them off. Come on, let's go eat outside. Being seen surrounded by cheerleaders will only help your social standing, trust me."

"Tell me," Kankri said, following her out of a side door of the cafeteria. "Is it... _allowed_ for students to dye unnatural colors into their hair?"

"What, you mean like Rufioh? The guy with the red in his hair," she added at his confused expression.

"Yes, like him."

"Well... technically, it's frowned upon, but there's nothing in the student handbook expressly forbidding it. Honestly, I think the teachers have given up trying to discipline the four of them—him and the other Lost Boys—but I promise, they're really not that bad. Well, maybe Cronus is. He likes to bully some of the underclassmen. The one, he's a sophomore now, Mituna Captor, seems to be his favorite target, although..." She readjusted her tray in her hands so she could toss a few strands of hair back from her face. They were striding toward the football field, where Kankri could already see a knot of girls sitting in the grass by the bleachers. "I can kind of understand why Mituna gets it. He's kind of a spaz," she added with a giggle.

"I see. Which one is Cronus? I'll make it a point to avoid him if possible."

"He's... oh, over there, see him? The one in the black jacket with his hair slicked back?"

Kankri followed her line of sight to the four guys lounging near the parking lot, leather jackets on. They made quite a picture, and his stomach clenched in fear. He saw immediately which one she was referring to, of course, but he noted also that all of them had brown bottles in their hands, bottles that looked distinctly like beer bottles. "Are... are they _drinking_?"

"Hmm? Oh, probably. Those two—Cronus and the bigger one with the really messy hair, his name is Kurloz—they're eighteen, so they can technically drink as long as the school doesn't catch them. I know for a fact that Rufioh doesn't turn eighteen for a few more months and Gamzee, the other one, is a junior so he's only like sixteen or something, so they shouldn't be, but..." She sighed. "Like I said, the school's basically given up on them. If they get caught, they'll get in a lot of trouble, but no one's gonna rat them out." She turned around. "Come on, I'll introduce you to the girls."

Kankri sat down with his back to the parking lot, feeling incredibly out of his element. He hadn't associated with cheerleaders at his old school since they had flirted way too much and earned his father's ire, but the ones here weren't so bad. They were actually pretty nice to him, which surprised him. It was probably through Porrim's influence, though.

All in all, though, it was rather nice to sit there with the sun shining down on him and just listen while the girls discussed their new teachers and their classmates and the football team's chances to make it to the state championship (not great, but better than last year) and how the baseball team was doing (one player, a sophomore named Zahhak, was apparently a powerhouse batter as well as an outstanding third baseman) and who had gotten a car over the summer and plans for after the first pep rally of the year that Friday night. Kankri wondered idly if his parents would object to him going to it—he had never been exactly interested in sports teams at his old school, but it also hadn't been very heavily emphasized at his old school. Here, it seemed like a bigger deal, and if he were going to fit in, it would behoove him to attend. Besides that, he was going to try to make more friends at this school. He would make the best of a frankly infuriating situation.

The back of his neck prickled uncomfortably and he got the impression that he was being watched. He continued eating, trying to ignore it, and wrapped one arm around himself. He didn't need the extra warmth—his sweater was more than sufficient for that—but it lent a bit of comfort to him. He resisted the urge to twist around to see if anyone was actually watching him. The only ones behind him were the greasers, anyway, and he really didn't like the idea of making eye contact with any of them, but that Cronus guy especially.

"So, Kankri, where are you from?" one of the cheerleaders asked, smiling at him. He didn't remember her name or if Porrim had even introduced any of them to him, but she had distinctly catlike features, and her skirt was an olive-green color with a little cat's face embroidered onto it. Her hair was long, light brown, and curly, cascading down her shoulders in waves. On a chain around her neck was someone's class ring—she was someone's girlfriend. He wondered idly who her boyfriend was.

"Louisiana. My family and I moved up here over the summer."

"You don't sound like you're from Louisiana."

"You mean my lack of an accent?"

"Yeah. I thought southern people all sounded like..."

"Dirk Strider?" Porrim said with a laugh.

"Who?"

Porrim smiled and shook her head, ruffling his hair. "It's okay, Kankri. You'll figure it out eventually. Dirk is a senior. Blond hair, always wears sunglasses. So does his brother Dave. They both have these crazy southern accents, too."

"Oh. Well, actually, most people from Louisiana don't have southern accents, unless they're from the bayou area—"

Porrim giggled again. "You had it there for just a second."

Kankri felt his cheeks flushing and contemplated hiding his face in his sweater. "Anyway..."

"Oh, it's cute," the other cheerleader said with a comforting smile. "So why did you move here?"

"My father... he was transferred," he said finally, deciding that the watered-down explanation was the simplest.

"You miss Louisiana?"

"A little. Starting over at a new high school for my junior year isn't the most ideal of circumstances, and while I'm certain some people would benefit from and even enjoy that kind of opportunity, it isn't what I wanted. I wasn't very popular at my previous school, either, so I'm afraid that the proverbial cards are already stacked against me, not that I play cards, because—"

Porrim put her hand over his mouth. "Okay, you got quite a mouth on you, don't you?" She was grinning, taking away some of the sting from her words.

"Sorry," he said. "I'm aware that I also have a tendency to ramble, which obviously led to my inability to make friends at my old school."

She laughed, shaking her head. "That's understandable. How about I just poke you when you're starting to talk too much?"

He considered it. His "word vomit" (as Karkat had so affectionately dubbed it last year) was rooted in his personality, but maybe, for the time being, it would be better for him to curb his habits, at least until he became generally accepted. "Alright. That sounds agreeable."

* * *

"Who the hell is that?" Cronus asked.

"Who's who?" Rufioh spun around wildly, nearly spilling his beer in the process, until Cronus grabbed him by the jacket and straightened him out.

"That guy. Over there with the cheerleaders. The cat in the red sweater."

Kurloz paused from where he was juggling apples and looked over. "Never motherfucking seen him before. Freshman?"

"Can't be. He's got lunch right now an' they _never_ give freshmen second lunch," Cronus pointed out. "Sophomores, maybe, but not freshmen."

"So maybe he's a sophomore. Or he could be a junior. Gamzee, you seen him in any of your classes?"

Gamzee was sitting on the pavement. Up until about twenty seconds before, he'd been watching his brother's juggling and laughing at it. Now, he scratched the back of his head. "Yeah. He was in my motherfucking homeroom. He motherfucking wandered in later than me."

"Wait, wait, wait. I think I recognize that cat. He was in the hallway when we were heading to homeroom, remember? Yeah, that was him—I recognize that sweater a' his," Cronus laughed.

"So he's a junior," Rufioh said.

They were all quiet for a moment until Cronus remembered where he'd been going with his first question. "Okay, so why the fuck is he hangin' out with the fuckin' cheerleaders? They don't talk to anyone but the jocks, an' he don't look very athletically-minded."

"Porrim fucked you," Kurloz pointed out.

"Yeah, _an_'? That doesn't mean anythin'. I never actually hung out with her, an' she fucked half the school anyway."

"Well, shit, I got no idea why a new kid is hangin' out with some of the most snotty, stuck-up chicks at school," Rufioh said with an exaggerated shrug. "But maybe he _is_ fuckin' one of them."

Cronus gave an undignified snort of laughter. "He looks like a total nerd! If he's fuckin' one of them, I'll sell my fuckin' car."

Rufioh shrugged again and took a bite of his turkey sandwich. "Hey, thanks for lunch, man."

"Don't mention it. It's no big deal." Cronus raised his bottle of beer to his lips. It was his second of the afternoon—his buzz had worn off halfway through science class and he'd been able to earn back the money he'd lost to Meenah, but even tipsy, he'd noticed the way she seemed to be warming up to him. Especially after finding out he had a car—she'd gotten _very_ friendly after that. Not that he was complaining in the slightest, of course. He could play it cool for a few more days and make his move on Friday at the pep rally. He'd ask her out for a slice of pizza or something, and hopefully she'd say yes.

But that led him to his other pet project—hooking Rufioh up. He didn't care so much about trying to get Kurloz or Gamzee laid because frankly, they were both total messes. He didn't envy the chicks that ended up with them, at least right now. Strip away their leather jackets and they were burnouts. No, even dirt-poor as he was, Rufioh had a far better chance than either of them. "Hey, Rufi, who do you got your eye on this year?"

"What, you mean like, who do I wanna go with?"

"Yeah."

He tilted his head and took a swig of his beer. "I don't really know. You're going after Meenah, right?"

Cronus hadn't expressly said anything about it. He'd either been way more obvious than he thought or Rufioh was just really perceptive. "Yeah, you could tell?"

Rufioh grinned. "You weren't exactly being subtle."

"Shut up." Cronus shoved him playfully, and Rufioh nearly slid off the hood of Cronus's car laughing.

"Alright, man, well, she's not really my type anyway, so you don't gotta worry about me moving in on her. She's kind of a bitch," he added.

He was right about that, but she was still Cronus's type. "Like you could compete with me anyway," he joked.

"It wouldn't be any contest at all, really. Completely unfair. If I really wanted her, there'd be no way she'd go out with your ass," Rufioh shot back.

"You're cruisin' for a bruisin'." He may have been right, though. If Rufioh's family was as rich as his, it was entirely possible that Rufioh would have better luck than him. Cronus wasn't about to admit that, though.

"I'm just kidding, man. I don't know, I hadn't really thought about it that much. I don't really think there's any girls here who _are_ my type."

"Okay, then what's your type?"

"I don't know," Rufioh said, shrugging. "I'll know her when I see her, I guess."

"What about Damara?" Cronus had noticed that, too. She'd practically been drooling all over him—Cronus was sure she'd say yes to him.

"Damara?" He furrowed his brows. "I don't know—is she even into me?"

Cronus nearly burst out laughing. "To say that she's into you would be an understatement. She was flirtin' with you all the way through science class, trust me. Although you callin' her 'doll' every other sentence probably didn't help, either."

"I call every girl 'doll,' though."

He shrugged. "I call them like I see them, man. She likes you."

"Hmm. She _is_ pretty cute," Rufioh admitted. He glanced at Kurloz and Gamzee. The elder Makara had gone back to juggling the apples they'd all gotten for lunch, but Gamzee was juggling now, too. He was tossing three empty bottles in the air, slowly backing up onto the grass in case he dropped one. "These fucking clowns," he said with a fond smile.

"Sometimes I wonder how it came to this," Cronus joked.

But he knew full well how they'd ended up as friends. Freshman year, Kurloz hadn't been nearly as much of a stoner as he was now. He'd been a bit of a weird one, true enough, but he was cool. The three of them had ended up in the same history class, and for their whole freshman year, they'd been the terrible trio. The next year, when Gamzee was a freshman, they'd assimilated him into their group easily. The Makaras were both good for laughs, though, even now. Even though they could be jackasses at times, they weren't bad guys.

"So." Rufioh flipped up the collar of his jacket. "You really think Damara would say yes if I asked her out?"

"Oh, hell, yeah! Look, Friday night, I'm gonna ask Meenah out for pizza. If you asked Damara out, you guys could join us an' we could double-date. The girls would probably like that."

Rufioh nodded slowly. "Hmm. That's a good idea. I'll ask her then."

"Good." Cronus finished off his bottle and tossed it onto the grass. He twisted around to grab his own sandwich off the hood of his car, looked back at Red Sweater, and wondered once again who he was and, moreover, why he was already so friendly with the cheerleaders.

* * *

**Apparently people are shipping Crofioh because of the last chapter. Y'know what, I'm gonna play with that a little. (I was also going to write Rufioh as bisexual but I think he's just gay OOPS.)**


	6. Chapter 6

**Shipping to the left of me, shipping to the right.**

**Many thanks to Cucumbermonster4, YaoiOverlord, and iDreamBig for your reviews to the last chapter!**

* * *

When Rose Lalonde wandered into Home Economics, the last thing she expected to see was a man sitting behind the desk. Her schedule had only listed her teacher as _Egbert_, but men simply didn't teach Home Ec. It was a girls' class, after all. Boys took Auto Shop or Wood Shop while girls took Home Economics. _How odd._

She took a seat at one of the tables as more people shuffled in—including a boy, Rose noted with some surprise. This was going to be a very interesting semester.

The teacher looked up as a girl with short dark hair and oval glasses walked past him. She waved excitedly. "Hi, Uncle—" She stopped when the teacher shook his head once with a small smile.

"It's 'Mr. Egbert' in the classroom, Jane."

Her grin widened and she flashed him a thumbs-up. "You got it, _Mr. Egbert_!"

Rose raised an eyebrow.

The classroom filled up, the second bell rang, and Egbert stood up. He was dressed crisply, in a long-sleeved white dress shirt, white pants, and a black necktie. Rose amused herself for a moment with the image of him wearing a floral-print apron during one of the cooking segments.

"Good afternoon, class. My name is Mr. Egbert, and I will be your instructor for this course. Now, it looks like everyone's here, but..." He cracked another small smile. "I should probably call roll to learn everyone's names." He took a list off his desk and started rattling off names. When he got to _Crocker_, the girl Jane, his niece apparently, chirped, "Here!"

Jane had joined Rose at her table, along with the lone boy and another girl with short hair and a red skirt. They all looked friendly enough, although she didn't really know what to make of _him_. What sort of boy took Home Economics?

Then again, that begged the question, what sort of man _taught_ Home Economics?

Rose was the next one at their table to be called. After _Linwood_, he called _Maryam_, and the other girl raised her hand. "Present." Two students later, he reached _Nitram_, and the boy tentatively said, "Uh, here?"

A couple of girls at another table giggled. The boy went red and hid his face, and Rose felt bad for him. He was probably going to get teased for taking Home Ec, after all. _What does it matter?_ she asked herself. So what if a boy wanted to take Home Economics? Now that she thought about it, it was kind of admirable. He wouldn't have to rely on someone else to cook and clean for him or anything like that. Not many boys would willingly take on that responsibility.

Once Mr. Egbert finished roll call, he put away his class roster and crossed his arms over his chest, leaning back against his desk. "So who wants to tell me what they think Home Economics is about?"

Jane's hand shot up and a wry smile crossed his face briefly.

"Anyone besides Jane?"

No one else raised their hand.

"Okay, Jane. What's Home Ec about?"

"Sustaining a happy household."

He tilted his head to the side. "In the most generic terms, yes, you're right. But I was looking for a bit more specific."

This time, Jane didn't have an answer.

"Specifically, this class will teach you how to bake and cook and clean, how to do laundry, how to sew, how to manage household finances. Or, as I like to say, it'll teach you self-sufficiency. If you can do all these things, you won't need to rely on other people to help you—and I'm especially glad you're taking this class, Mr. Nitram. Not many high school boys realize it would be smart for them to know this sort of thing, too. I firmly believe that this class is not just for girls, or else I wouldn't be teaching it." He paused for a moment. "Besides, life happens. Circumstances change. Just because you may have someone now who can do all those things doesn't mean you always will."

_Well, _that_ was morbid._ But he was right about that. Rose knew perfectly well that you couldn't always rely on someone to do the basic things for you. Even in her own family, her mother was an alcoholic and probably hadn't cooked a meal in twenty years. Her sister Roxy was heading down that same path of alcohol abuse at eighteen. Rose was determined not to end up like either of them.

She didn't have to worry about being fed because her mother was rich enough to afford a cook and a maid, but neither of _them_ were about to teach Rose the basics of doing laundry.

Mr. Egbert went on, continuing to tell them about what the course would cover, but Rose became distracted when the girl on her right (she didn't know her first name, just that her last name was Maryam) began digging around in her bag. After a moment, she pulled out a notebook and a pen. Rose barely had time to register _Kanaya M._ on the front cover of the notebook before the girl flipped it open and began writing in a loopy, ridiculously large script. Rose couldn't resist turning her head slightly to get a better look.

It almost looked like calligraphy. How had she learned how to do that? It didn't even look like someone's actual handwriting. Who wrote like that? How was that even possible?

Kanaya's hand paused and then set down the pen. Rose blinked and looked up. Kanaya was looking right at her, and for once, Rose couldn't discern the expression she wore.

"Excuse me," Kanaya said crisply.

"Hi, I'm Rose."

"Kanaya."

"Sorry, I just... your handwriting is incredible."

"Oh, is _that_ what you were staring at?" Kanaya asked, a small smile appearing on her face.

That polite little smile had Rose smiling back automatically.

"Yeah, sorry. I guess that was a little odd, wasn't it?"

"Perhaps a little." Kanaya was still smiling, so Rose could tell she wasn't too upset about it, but she started to feel slightly self-conscious. It wasn't often she was caught off her guard like that.

The boy later hesitantly introduced himself as Tavros. Rose wasn't sure how well he'd do in the class—he looked like he was ready to bolt at any moment—but Jane actually seemed to have a handle on what the class would entail, which made sense, considering she was the teacher's niece. They would all probably benefit from Jane's presence in their group.

Kanaya, she knew, was a sophomore. Rose remembered seeing her at lunch—the same with Tavros. Jane, on the other hand... Rose didn't know about her. She didn't look old enough to be a senior, so she was probably a junior. She looked nice enough, though.

There was a small sound of ripping paper and then Rose felt something sliding against her elbow. She glanced down just in time to see Kanaya's hand pulling away from her and a small piece of folded-up paper against her arm. She unfolded it and read that now-familiar script from earlier. _Are You Planning On Going To The Pep Rally This Weekend?_

Rose smiled and pulled out her own pen. _I hadn't really thought about it. I might go. It depends on if I can get a ride._ She slid the paper back to Kanaya.

The other girl read it over, twirling a lock of hair through her fingers before writing her response and sending it back. _My Sister Is A Cheerleader, So She Will Need To Be There. I Will Be Going As Well. Perhaps We Could Provide Transportation?_

She realized she liked that idea a lot. She didn't have many friends—not because she was unlikeable, but because she generally kept more to herself—but Kanaya seemed to be intelligent thus far and nice to boot. _Okay. I'm sure my mother won't mind at all._

When Kanaya read her answer, Rose was sure she saw an excited smile before it disappeared to be replaced by a neutral expression.

* * *

One class Eridan was sure he was going to be thankful for this year was seventh-hour Theater Arts. Even after the teacher explained what they'd be doing during the class, he had a feeling it was going to be an incredibly easy course. It would be fun, too, of course, but it wouldn't take much effort and it would be just what he needed for his last class of the day, a welcome reprieve from the utter bullshit of his sixth-hour American Literature class. On top of that, he knew one of the other kids in his class already, another sophomore named Feferi Peixes. They'd had their Algebra class together the year before and talked a little bit—somehow, they'd discovered a mutual love of aquariums—but they'd never actually spent any time together outside of school. Maybe this year they could change that. He made a mental note to find out if she was going to the pep rally that Friday.

The two of them naturally gravitated toward each other at the beginning of class, as two people who half-knew each other in a class of strangers tended to do. It was awkward at first—seconds before the bell signaling the start of class and they stood there in the middle of the auditorium, staring at each other, Eridan shuffling his feet. Her skirt was light blue and sea-green by turns, her shirt was black, and her hair was dark brown and long with her bangs pinned back behind her head to look like a crown or tiara. She looked really nice and it made him a little nervous, but he cleared his throat anyway. "Hey, Fef. You wanna sit with me?"

She smiled brightly, reassuring him. "Sure, Eridan! How was your summer?"

"Not long enough." He led the way to a row near the front and looked back at her. "Is here okay?"

"It's just fine. I know what you mean about summer being too short, though. I don't get nearly enough time to swim _anemone_more."

He couldn't help but grin at her pun as he sat down in a seat in the middle of the row. "You got a pool at your house, right?" he asked. He seemed to recall her mentioning it the year before.

She sat down next to him and smoothed out her skirt; distantly, he heard the second bell ring. "Yep! But I joined the swim team, too, so once practice starts up, I'll be happier."

_That_ surprised him. "The swim team? I didn't think there were any girls on the swim team."

"_Whale_, there's one now! Once I tried out for the team, they practically begged me to join, too!"

He chuckled. "So you're faster than you look, I guess."

"Yep! My parents say sometimes that I'm half-mermaid or something." She grinned and shrugged. "I just really like to swim, though."

"So I take it you're goin' to the pep rally on Friday night?"

"Yeah, I pretty much have to now!"

They were forced to discontinue their conversation when their teacher stood up and began talking, but it was enough for Eridan. In his mind, he'd already been cemented as one of her friends for the year, and not being alone right now was a comforting thought.

When the bell for dismissal finally rang, both he and Feferi jumped out of their seats and nearly sprinted out of the auditorium right behind the rest of the class. It had been a really long school day and Eridan was definitely looking forward to going home, but he figured he'd be nice and walk her to her car or something. He vaguely remembered that she had an older sister, although he wasn't sure if his mind was just inventing things.

"How are you gettin' home?" he asked.

"My sister Meenah. She's going to be driving me and her friends Aranea and Vriska to school every day this year, it looks like."

Eridan half-chuckled in solidarity and nodded. "Yeah, my brother's kinda like the chauffeur right now since he has to drive me an' his friend Rufioh an' Rufi's brother Tav. I know the feeling."

"Squished in the back, right?"

"Yeah, I don't get front-seat rights anymore." They stepped out into the parking lot and Eridan swung his head in the direction of where he'd seen Cronus's car during lunch. Kurloz, Gamzee, Rufioh, and Tavros were all hanging out around there, leaning up against Cronus's car or Kurloz's car, but Cronus himself was nowhere to be found.

"Who's that?" Feferi asked abruptly, drawing his attention in the other direction.

There was Cronus, half-sitting on the hood of fuchsia-colored Chrysler and talking to a girl with long, dark braids and pink glasses similar to Feferi's. Actually, now that he was looking, she bore a striking resemblance to Feferi in just about every other regard, too. "Is that your sister Meenah?" he asked.

"Yeah, but I can't figure out who that guy is. I know he's a tool, but..."

"That's a pretty accurate assessment," he said with a laugh. "That's my brother Cronus."

She looked stunned for a moment before it melted away. "Oh, yeah. I guess I forgot your last name was Ampora. It didn't even occur to me that it was the same last name, either."

"Don't worry about it." Now that he was looking, though, he wondered what Cronus was doing over there anyway. "Might as well go over there, right?"

"Yes, I suppose so."

They continued on to Meenah's car. Cronus sensed their approach and turned to look at them, surprise dawning on his face. "Hey, little monster. What are you doin' here?"

"Just seein' Fef to her car. I didn't know you two knew each other," Eridan added, gesturing from Cronus to Meenah.

Both of them grinned and he suddenly realized what was going on with them. He recognized it from last year. His brother was interested in Meenah, and he didn't know why, but the thought worried him a bit. He knew her by reputation and he knew the only way this would end was badly. Before he said anything, though, he decided against it. Cronus was eighteen now. He could do what he wanted. It wasn't going to affect his life in any way.

"We got science class together," Cronus explained, fishing a cigarette out of the box and sticking it in his mouth. "By the way, never _ever_ play poker against her. She'll kick your ass."

Meenah's smirk widened and she bowed. "Compared to you, _anemone_one would look like a champ."

Cronus groaned and pretended to fall over, clutching his heart. "Damn, you cut me real deep there."

"Meenah, what's with the trash on your car?" another voice asked, and they all turned toward it to see a girl with short dark hair, blue glasses, and a blue dress with a bright-pink jacket over her shoulders. She was glaring right at the elder Ampora.

"Meenah, what's with the spider-bitch?" Cronus shot back.

"Could you two can it with the drama for ten _glubbing_ seconds?" Meenah snapped. "Stop antagonizin' each other. Cronus, I'll see you later. You're sure about Rufioh?"

"Positive. Come on, little monster, let's go home."

Eridan barely got time to say goodbye to Feferi before his brother was dragging him toward his car.

* * *

**Aranea doesn't think much of Cronus, and for good reason. He's a bit of a cunt. (Also they had a bad breakup.) (Also lesbifins.)**


	7. Chapter 7

**Remember how I said people were shipping Crofioh after I unintentionally added it? Well this time, it wasn't unintentional.**

**(I don't own Homestuck, obviously, but I also don't own the lyrics to the song "If I Give My Heart to You," performed by Doris Day.)**

**Many thanks to iDreamBig, Cucumbermonster4, DarkBlueMahogany, can we not, pendaly, and SilverEnderwolf for your reviews to the last chapter!**

* * *

Dinner was a quiet affair. The Reverend Karter Vantas had returned from the hospital, and after a brief but holy blessing over their food, they began eating.

No one was allowed to speak during dinner unless Karter addressed them first—his wife included. As such, dinner was almost always silent, save for the clatter of silverware. Sometimes, Kankri was grateful for the peace, but tonight, just once, he wished his father would at least ask him and Karkat how their first day of school had been.

But that was too much to hope for. Karter Vantas was a fairly quiet man until he was at his pulpit—then he seemed possessed by some oratory spirit, filling him with holy words that poured forth to light his congregation aflame with the Lord. Kankri respected him for that, but it was difficult not to wish sometimes that they could be a normal family.

Once in awhile, Karkat would look up at him from his plate and they'd exchange glances. It wasn't often that the two of them agreed on anything, but Kankri could tell that his brother was bursting to say something. He would chew on the inside of his cheek and peek up at their parents from time to time, and once or twice he would even open his mouth to say something—Kankri hoped he didn't because it would be a sure way to infuriate their father—but Karkat evidently thought better of it at the last second and put another bite of chicken in his mouth.

After dinner was finished and all the dishes were cleared away, Kankri went back to his room. He didn't know what he was going to do for the rest of the evening—he didn't have any homework to do and still no friends to hang out with. He doubted Porrim would be paying a visit anytime soon, either. She had plenty of other friends to hang out with, after all. She wouldn't want to spend time with a preacher's son.

He tugged off his sweater and tossed it into his dirty clothes hamper. He flopped onto his bed and closed his eyes without falling asleep. He supposed he could have read or cracked one of his textbooks to get a jump on anything for school, but he didn't feel like it. It wasn't often that he was taken restless, but tonight, for some reason, he was. Maybe it was finally being finished with his first day at Lakeside that had him wandering to his window and opening it.

It was getting dark already. He didn't notice how much time had already passed, but it was close to eight. Music on the breeze floated into his room through another open window somewhere else in the neighborhood, some happy love song from just a year or two ago. He ran his fingers through his hair, resting his elbows on the windowsill, and wondered if this was how you were supposed to feel at sixteen. His birthday had only been six short weeks ago, the middle of July, but he hadn't really _felt_ sixteen until just now.

"_If I give my heart to you, will you handle it with care?"_

Kankri hopped up onto the windowsill, sliding the window open higher and locking it open. He vaguely seemed to recall hearing this song before, maybe a snippet of it when his mother changed the radio stations as they traveled up to Ohio. The frequencies would change as they crossed county and state lines, but she had a knack for tuning the radio.

"_Will you always treat me tenderly and in every way be fair?"_

It was the kind of sappy love song his father would scoff at. He would make Kankri's mother change stations to something "less frivolous," but Kankri had rather enjoyed the stations that played music and not just talking.

"_If I give my heart to you, will you give me all your love?"_

He wondered how it would feel to be in love. He couldn't even imagine the sort of girl he'd fall in love with, but he hoped she would feel the same way as him. His father had a tendency to say that romantic love was fleeting, that the only love that lasted was the love God had for his people, but Kankri privately thought that was nonsense. After all, Karter had married his mother, hadn't he? They'd been married for seventeen years on Christmas day this year—surely he didn't think that way about his wife.

"_Will you swear that you'll be true to me by the light that shines above?"_

He found his thoughts drifting, wondering what his parents had been like when they first met, wondering how they'd fallen in love. Didn't it take a special kind of love to marry someone? He didn't believe that his father really thought the love between him and Kankri's mother was fleeting. That didn't make sense.

"_And will you sigh with me when I'm sad? Smile with me when I'm glad?"_

A car roared by with its windows rolled down, cutting through Kankri's thoughts. He heard laughter from within mingling with more music, and he saw the distinct glow of cigarettes. He couldn't tell how many people were in the car, but he shook his head, half-smiling. He didn't know why, but he wished he was out there right now, doing _something—_he didn't know what.

"_And always be as you are with me tonight?"_

The car disappeared from sight and hearing, leaving only the lingering sensation of unease, of missed opportunities, of a chance that was fast slipping away. He sighed, staring after it, wondering if it was something about tonight that made him feel like he was on the verge of something important or if it was just his imagination—or maybe it was a feeling that would stay with him.

"_Think it over and be sure, please don't answer 'til you do."_

Another window slid open somewhere, but he barely noticed it. He hopped off the windowsill and crossed his room to flick off the light. It was still fairly early and he didn't have any desire to go to sleep, but he certainly wasn't about to go into the living room just to watch his mother sewing or hear his father hammering out his sermon for Sunday. Karter would look up at him and make some comment on idleness, and Kankri really didn't want to hear it right now.

"_When you promise all those things to me, then I'll give my heart to you."_

He heard a faint thud, and _that_ he noticed. It seemed to come from outside, so he slunk back to the window to look.

"_And will you sigh with me when I'm sad? Smile with me when I'm glad?" _

There was a figure out there in the tiny backyard. He picked himself up off the ground and brushed off his pants before turning, and Kankri caught sight of his face. It was Karkat.

"_And always be as you are with me tonight?"_

His younger brother's eyes widened in surprise and he put a finger to his lips in a silent plea. _Where is he going?_ Kankri wondered wildly, but he didn't dare call out to him from the window. That was a sure way to attract their parents' attention, and he had no intention of doing that, either.

"_Think it over and be sure, please don't answer 'til you do."_

Kankri nodded once, quickly, and the silhouette of Karkat's shoulders slumped in relief. He spared a second to wave before dashing out of the backyard, hopping the fence to the sidewalk, and tearing away from the house. He'd evidently made friends today, far sooner than Kankri had, and he couldn't help envying his younger brother for having some place to sneak out to tonight.

"_When you promise all those things to me, then I'll give my heart to you."_

Kankri dropped his window almost completely, leaving it cracked an inch. He wouldn't tell his father that Karkat had gone out secretly. Perhaps that was the way it was supposed to be, anyway—Karkat had always been the more rebellious of them.

He went to his desk as the music from outside faded away into nothing and pulled out a notebook and pencil from the drawer. For lack of anything better to do tonight, he could sketch at least, even with his light off.

At least then, he wouldn't have to see how bad it looked.

* * *

His dad usually passed out drunk around eight-thirty, and after that, he couldn't be roused until sunrise—not that Rufioh planned to wake him anyway. He'd made that mistake just once, eleven years ago. The result was so terrifying that it stuck with him for good.

Once he was sure he heard his dad's snores from the living room sofa, he crept to Tavros's room to make sure he didn't need anything and then slunk outside through the front door. He probably didn't need to tiptoe—his father was notorious for what he could sleep through—but he also didn't want to risk anything. But once the front door closed behind him, he swung his jacket over his shoulders and strolled down the sidewalk, his hands in his pockets. Cronus and the rest of the Lost Boys would be heading to the Freeze King for burgers and shakes. Kurloz would have swung by Cronus's house with Gamzee in tow, but they would know better than to try to pick up Rufioh. They knew by now that it was just asking for trouble.

As the barking of the Nitram family bulldogs faded behind him, he felt his shoulders slumping. He pulled out a cigarette, struck a match, and let the nicotine pour into his lungs. He liked walking anyway. It gave him a chance to clear his head, gave him a reprieve into some much-needed isolation. Not that he didn't love Tavros—he really did; he'd do anything for his brother—but he couldn't talk to him. Not about anything that really mattered anymore, anyway. There was so much he couldn't talk to him about. Or anyone else, for that matter.

Cronus was his best friend, and he couldn't even talk to him anymore. It hurt and he wished he could talk to _someone_, but no one would understand. All he could do was pretend everything was alright and hope for the best.

It was Cronus's car that was in front of the Freeze King tonight, not Kurloz's. He supposed it shouldn't have surprised him since Cronus would want to drive around, to show off his car. He peered through the windows of the restaurant and saw, sure enough, that all three of them were there. They had gotten a booth and were currently shooting straw wrappers at each other.

Rufioh smiled to himself and went inside, flicking his cigarette butt to the ground. The bell above the door rang, drawing the attention of half of the patrons, including his friends. Cronus turned around, caught sight of him, grinned, and waved him over. Rufioh tried to ignore the uptick to his heart rate as he waved back and went to join them.

Both of the Makaras had taken one side of the booth, allowing Rufioh to slide into the booth next to Cronus. "Hey, guys. You already order yet?"

"Yeah," Cronus said. "Hey." He kicked Gamzee underneath the table—the younger Makara was blowing bubbles in his soda. "Grow the fuck up, chief."

"Calm the motherfuck down," Gamzee said lazily, crossing his eyes at Cronus.

"Anyway, when the waitress comes back, you can order, too."

There was a reason Rufioh had eaten dinner back at home—he couldn't afford to eat out. He nodded quickly and picked up a menu and pretended to look it over until a balled-up napkin came flying at his head. He giggled and tossed it back at Kurloz, who nearly fell out of the booth laughing.

"You're a fuckin' dork," Rufioh laughed.

He managed to keep himself occupied until the waitress came back with Cronus's and Kurloz's burgers and fries and Gamzee's chicken fingers and fries. Then she glanced at Rufioh and smiled. "Hey, hon, what can I get you?"

Rufioh smiled to cover his sudden return of nerves and said, "Nothin', doll, I'm fine."

The next thing he knew, Cronus was leaning across him, pinning him to the seat between his arm and his body, sending a wave of delicious-smelling cologne over him. Rufioh inhaled surreptitiously, wishing Cronus's proximity didn't send his heart racing and his head spinning. _Stop it_, his brain protested feebly, but he wanted nothing more than to shove Cronus against the seat and kiss him hard. _I'm a freak._

"Don't listen to him. Whatever he wants, put on my check," Cronus said with a smile of his own.

Damn him for being so goddamn _nice_. The Lost Boys were the only ones who ever got to see how chill Cronus could actually be. He gave off a "tough guy" image when other people were around, but when the four of them were in their own self-contained bubble, the act dropped.

The fact was, Rufioh had had a stupid, freakish crush on Cronus since the moment he laid eyes on him in freshman year. It wasn't just that he was dark and gorgeous with a self-assured swagger borne of money and style—although that had a lot to do with it. It was also the way he obviously cared about his friends, evidenced by the time he'd punched out a senior when they were sophomores for talking shit about Rufioh's family. If anything, though, it had only exacerbated his crush on Cronus. Sometimes, he wasn't convinced that he _didn't_ know how Rufioh felt about him, though, because it seemed like he was openly flirting with him, although other times—like earlier today—he wondered how he didn't know. Trying to set him up with Damara Megido... there was nothing _wrong_ with her, per se, but he just didn't like her. It was cool that she had a crush on him or whatever, but it was useless.

Cronus leaned back and affectionately smacked Rufioh on the shoulder. "So, whatcha want, chief?" Like that—it could have been a genuine flirtation. It almost seemed deliberate, and no matter how much Rufioh wished Cronus didn't affect him like that, he also half-enjoyed the way he felt whenever Cronus showed him any kind of attention. It was confusing. If Rufioh didn't know him, he would say he flirted with everyone, even him.

"Uh, can I get a double bacon cheeseburger with the works, an order of fries, and a cherry Coke?" He _had_ just eaten an hour or so before, but he was still incredibly hungry. It seemed like the only things he felt constantly were confused and hungry. It was an infuriating combination.

"Sure thing. Be right back, hon."

"Bangarang." He grinned at the waitress until she left the table, and then his smile dropped. "Thanks for that, man," he said to Cronus.

"Don't worry about it, chief. It's really no big deal," Cronus said, cuffing him on the shoulder again.

Rufioh forced a grin and slid his sunglasses on to hide half of his face. Neither of the Makaras would probably notice if his gaze lingered a little too long on Cronus, but Cronus himself probably would.

They couldn't know. They could never know—Cronus especially. They would hate him forever, more than he hated himself, and he hated himself a lot.

But Cronus didn't seem to notice right now and he kept cracking lame jokes and nudging Rufioh and, in general, unintentionally fanning the flames of Rufioh's attraction. He would laugh along with the Makaras, but inside, all he heard was a steady mantra of _I'm a freak, I'm a freak_.

And he was. He was a freak.

* * *

**The shipping continues.**


	8. Chapter 8

**Sorry for the suck that is this chapter. I got about halfway through and went "? What character(s) have we not met yet?" so contained herein is evidence of my multishipper heart. How the actual fuck did I complete a 75-chapter fic with no outline? Moreover, how the fuck was it cohesive and halfway decent? MOREOVER, how the fuck do I do it again?**

**Many thanks to can we not, DarkBlueMahogany, SilverEnderwolf, iDreamBig, Bitblondetoday, Cucumbermonster4, and one guest for your reviews to the last chapter! (About half of the reviews had something like "Rufioh bby nooooo" and it was so fucking funny. I can't wait to get to the Rufuss, though.)**

* * *

The next morning saw Kankri and Karkat leaving the house fifteen minutes earlier than the day before. During breakfast, Kankri told his mother that they'd cut their arrival time very close the previous day and that it would be wiser for them to leave sooner. Karkat hadn't liked it much—he ended up missing breakfast completely—but when they got to school and Kankri brought him to the area by the bleachers where the cheerleaders hung out, they were rewarded with cupcakes.

Apparently, it was Porrim's eighteenth birthday, and a junior named Jane Crocker (who was not a cheerleader but quite obviously a school-wide baking guru) had been asked to make cupcakes for the occasion. Fortunately, she'd made about five dozen, far too many for the small gaggle of cheerleaders. This meant that by the time the first bell rang, Karkat's face was smeared with strawberry frosting and he'd shoved the wrappers of three cupcakes into his pockets. Kankri was satisfied with just one.

He hadn't known it was Porrim's birthday, though, and he wished that she'd told him. Then again, maybe it made sense that she hadn't. Were they actually friends? Or was she just being nice to him by hanging out with him?

He opted not to wear his red sweater today, since he'd just worn it the day before and wearing the same thing two days in a row, especially the first two days, was bound to attract negative attention. He did _not_ want to be known as "weird sweater guy" or some variant thereof. Instead, he wore a different pair of dress pants and a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled all the way down.

The bell rang about five seconds after he took his seat in homeroom, and about five seconds after that, the door opened back up again and a late student wandered in and went to the back of the room. It all happened rather quickly, but terror flooded through Kankri all the same. He'd somehow managed to overlook this guy the day before, but there was no ignoring him now. It was—what did Porrim say his name was? Gamzee? That sounded about right—and his eyes were bloodshot when he strolled in, but his grin was wide, almost clownish, and he waved at the teacher, who just sighed and shook her head.

Kankri tried to look as small as possible as Gamzee passed by him.

The loudspeaker crackled to life with the four-note chime that Kankri had learned meant the morning announcements. Almost as one, his classmates slumped back in their seats and sighed. Yesterday's announcements had taken about five minutes, so he expected today's would be similar.

"_Good morning, students. Today is Tuesday, August 30, 1955._

"_This is just a reminder that Lakeside High's first pep rally will be this Friday. The bonfire will be lit at seven-thirty. Come and support Lakeside's athletics and enjoy a wonderful performance by our school's marching band and cheerleading squad._

"_The first football game of the season will be a home game on Saturday against the Jefferson High School Barracudas. Kickoff is at four o'clock, so be sure to arrive early to get good seats."_

He'd be going to the pep rally—or trying to, anyway—but he had no intention of going to the football game. Sports in general held little interest to him. Besides that, his father regarded athletics for their own sake to be a waste of time.

"_Nominations for student council president, vice president, secretary, treasurer, and representatives for sophomores, juniors, and seniors will be accepted next week during homeroom. Nominations for freshmen will be the following week, after you've all gotten a chance to know each other a little better."_

Well. _That_ was different. At his old school, the upperclassmen held their elections for the next year's student council before school let out for the summer so, once school started back up, only the freshmen had to elect their council. He raised his eyebrows and sat up a little straighter, his mind whirring. He'd been on the student council in both his freshman and sophomore years at his old school. Maybe he'd be able to make it this year, too.

Then again, he _had_ just started over at this school. He couldn't think of a single junior he actually _knew_ who would vote for him. He'd probably have better luck if he ran as a senior.

The principal—he still didn't know her name—went on, _"You can nominate yourself or others for any of the positions. Think carefully on who you'd like to represent you!_

"_Another reminder that tickets for the homecoming dance will be on sale starting next Monday during both lunches. Tickets will be five dollars per person, seven dollars per couple. Keep an eye out for homecoming committee members for more information!"_

Five dollars was ridiculously expensive. His parents would almost certainly not be willing to spend that kind of money on homecoming tickets, and he didn't have money of his own. His father regarded the whole process of homecoming to be frivolous, anyway, especially when neither he nor Karkat would really be "coming home." Karter Vantas, upon hearing that Kankri had wanted to go to homecoming his freshman year, had flat-out said, "Freshman don't go to homecoming." Kankri had almost argued but wisely decided against it at the last minute. It was useless to argue with his father.

He also didn't have anyone he could really go to the dance with, anyway, and he didn't relish the idea of going stag, so there was that.

The principal went on, but even Kankri, who had a fairly lengthy attention span, found his thoughts drifting. He glanced up at the clock, idly wondering when lunch was, and realized that announcements had been going on for six minutes now. He hoped it wouldn't be like this for the whole school year.

"_One final reminder to our older students: even if you are eighteen, the consumption of alcohol is expressly forbidden on school grounds. This rule applies at all times—at lunches, before school, after school—and during all school-related functions, including pep rallies and sporting events. Any student caught with alcohol on their person will be suspended for one week."_

Kankri couldn't help but smile to himself at that. It appeared he wasn't the only one to notice the greasers drinking the day before.

"_Happy eighteenth birthday to Porrim Maryam. Have a good day, students."_

Another four-note chime rang out, a reversal of the sequence from earlier, and the loudspeaker snapped off. There was silence for a few long moments before the teacher surveyed them all and said, "I hope you all caught that about alcohol on school grounds. Apparently, the janitorial staff last night saw several empty beer bottles on the grass near the parking lot. Everyone is encouraged to report it if they see students drinking on school property."

Kankri debated for a moment but decided not to say anything. Not this time, anyway. If he saw the greasers drinking on campus again, he'd report them, but he'd let it slide this time.

Homeroom let out a few minutes later and the crush of juniors joined the rest of the student body as everyone scrambled for their lockers and started juggling books. Kankri had one of the last lockers in the corridor, closest to the main hallway of the building, so he had a little more elbow room, but the lack of his sweater had somehow rendered him invisible and he found himself still being jostled by people passing by. _I might as well be a freshman again for how much attention people pay me._ He wasn't sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing, but he suspected, if he was thinking of running for the student council, that it was probably bad. No one would vote for him if they didn't know who he was. What happened to yesterday, when he was "the preacher's son"? Was that over so fast?

He slammed his locker shut and hefted the books for his first two classes into his arms. The hallways were already starting to empty out, and he didn't want to be late on the second day.

* * *

She sat cross-legged at her desk, tilting her head to the side and surreptitiously peeking at the boy next to her. He was cute in a young-looking sort of way, with a delicate sort of nose. He squinted, though, giving him a perpetually-annoyed expression. Or maybe he just _was_ perpetually annoyed. It was possible. He'd grumbled under his breath a lot the day before.

She was careful not to let him see her looking at him, though. It would be embarrassing, of course—but he might also just be flat-out angry with her. She was sketching him, and it definitely wasn't great, but he might think it was meant to be insulting even though she didn't mean it to be insulting at all. She just found his face compelling.

She finished outlining his facial features and glanced back up for a better look at his eyes. She couldn't tell if they were gray or light blue—they probably varied based on lighting or something like that—but she settled on gray and shaded his eyes in with her pencil. His hair was messy, falling into his eyes, and she instinctively wanted to push it back.

The teacher began weaving between the desks, so she slid the drawing under her notebook and pretended to be taking notes. Fortunately, math had always come easy for her, so she wasn't too concerned with studying algebra. She had other things on her mind—like her sister trying to talk her into trying out for the cheerleading squad. She didn't have anything against being a cheerleader, but she didn't really want to give up a lot of her free after-school time to devote to learning cheers and waving pom-poms at football players. She was actually thinking about trying out for the winter play—she heard it was going to be _Macbeth—_but she'd forgo it if she found that her workload was going to be too much.

By the time the class ended, she'd finished the sketch and glanced at his book just long enough to see that his first name was Karkat (she did seem to recall that he had an unusual name). She scrawled it across the top of the sketch as quickly as she could, wrote her initials and the date at the bottom, and tossed it onto his desk. Before he could react, she started gathering up her books and headed out the door, but she looked back just in time to catch him looking over the drawing with an actual smile on his face.

Nepeta smiled, too, and went back to her locker. She had PE next, so she didn't want to bring any books with her.

Boys and girls had PE together, which was different than her middle school. Even more strange to her was the fact that they threw together freshmen and sophomores in their PE classes as well, although apparently it wasn't required, only optional, for juniors and seniors. Still, she didn't really like the idea of having a class with sophomore boys.

They had five minutes after the second bell rang to be changed into their PE uniforms, so Nepeta scrambled into the Lakeside High School red-and-purple T-shirt and gym shorts and hurried out of the girls' locker room to the gymnasium floor as quickly as she could. A lot of boys were already lined up, dribbling a few basketballs on the court, although there was one who hadn't joined them. She slunk over to them and hunched down.

He glanced down at her briefly—he was at least eight inches taller than her—but didn't say anything. She met his gaze, grinned, and said, "Cat got your tongue?"

He furrowed his brows for a moment before a small smile broke across his face. "I was unaware we were having a conversation."

"We are _meow_!" she said, her obsessive love of cat puns showing itself. "Why aren't you playing with them? Are they all sophomores and you're a freshman?" she added as a few more boys wandered out of the boys' locker room and immediately went to the impromptu basketball game. He didn't really _look_ like a freshman, but that didn't mean much.

"No, I'm a sophomore. But as it happens, basketball is not my game. I have the height for it, true enough, but I never quite grasped the concept of dribbling." He watched the other boys—along with one of the girls, who had managed to swipe the basketball and was now dashing full-tilt down the court—and crossed his arms over his chest.

"So no sports at all?"

"I play baseball."

"You any good?"

He grinned. "I don't wish to brag, but I happen to be a phenomenal batter and an excellent third baseman."

"Then you better hope we'll be playing baseball today," Nepeta joked.

At that moment, the PE teacher blew his whistle, signaling the start of the actual class, and everyone began drifting toward where he stood. He led the class in warm-up stretches and then sent them running three laps around the gym, and the sophomore—Nepeta hadn't caught his name, which made her want to smack herself—immediately pulled to the front of the pack. He seemed to be nothing but legs when he ran, a blur of red and purple and the shock of black that was his long hair. He finished the circuits first, ten seconds before the next person, and barely seemed winded, although he was sweating profusely. Then the teacher ushered them all outside for their actual event for the day.

Soccer.

Nepeta didn't see the appeal of chasing a ball up and down a field for an hour—maybe that was why she didn't like football, either, which was basically the same thing but with far more contact. At least it was faster-paced than football.

She would have preferred to stay on the sidelines and draw, but when the teams were divided up, she was one of the first girls to be picked—by the sophomore, who she heard the PE teacher refer to as Equius. She didn't end up contributing much to the game since she got knocked over more times than she cared to count, but it was nice not to be chosen last for once.

Maybe she and Equius could be friends. He seemed nice enough, and baseball at least was one sport she could follow pretty easily. He seemed to like her, too, since he'd picked her to be on his team relatively early on while there were still other girls who had outrun her during their warm-up laps.

As they drifted back inside to change back into their regular clothes, she decided she'd talk to him more tomorrow. At the very least, Meulin would be glad to hear that she was starting to make friends.

Back in the locker room, there were already a few girls from the next class changing into their gym uniforms. The only one Nepeta really noticed was the one who'd picked the locker right next to hers, a girl maybe an inch taller than her with her long, dark waves pulled back in a high ponytail and her fuchsia-framed glasses sliding down the bridge of her nose. She flashed Nepeta a wide smile as she finished tying her shoes and scooted over on the bench to make room for her, and Nepeta smiled back, feeling shaky for reasons she couldn't quite figure out. She normally always knew what to say, but this time, she couldn't think of anything.

It wasn't until the other girl had sauntered out to the gym that Nepeta thought of something. _How are you?_ She thunked her forehead against the adjacent locker. _Stupid, stupid, stupid._ She changed her clothes as quickly as she could, trying to shove the embarrassing encounter out of her mind, but she was only reminded once again as she left the locker room a few minutes later and saw the same girl. She waved and Nepeta waved back, but she still blushed as she left.

_I'll talk to her tomorrow, too. Maybe._

* * *

**Arghhhh KatNep or Fefeta?**

**Fefeta. Fefeta every time.**

**Yeah, sorry about all the suck...I am very tired. (On the plus side, I got started on the next installment of "Fast Times at The Hive"!)**


	9. Chapter 9

**I finished this last night but I had someone over and we were watching movies on my laptop so nooooooo. *facepalm* Anyway, here it is.**

**Something I want to address first, though, is that this fic is still primarily Cronkri! I'm just a master at the slow-build, remember? (Check out "Coming to Terms" if you haven't as proof of that because the shit is 75 chapters long and it's getting a sequel _AND THEY STILL HAVE NOT DONE THE FONDUE YET_.) I am just setting up the proverbial chess board, as it were.**

**Many thanks to rincrocker, can we not, Bitblondetoday, ScalemateSeamstress, iDreamBig, Cucumbermonster4, and one guest for your reviews to the last chapter!**

* * *

The bus bumped over the pockmarked road, but Roxy barely noticed a thing. She unscrewed the cap to her flask and took a surreptitious swig, ducking slightly behind the seat to avoid attention. For the next few weeks, school officials would be watching anyone suspected of drinking on school property, and sure, she wasn't technically _on_ school property anymore, but the bus still fell under school jurisdiction and it would be wise to keep her _little habit_ (as Roxy's own mother called it) a secret.

The Smirnoff burned her throat going down, but it was a good burn. She closed her eyes and smiled, leaning back in her seat. Her sister Rose was a few seats ahead of her, the clacking of her knitting needles drowned out by the cacophony in the bus, but she had her head down, so Roxy knew she could only be knitting right now. That was Rose's _little habit_, her nigh-compulsive knitting, but at least it was nowhere near as destructive as Roxy secretly knew hers was.

Roxy frowned and took another swig out of her flask. She had a pretty good idea who it was who'd left those beer bottles on school property—she'd seen the brown bottles as she left the day before only a few feet away from Kurloz Makara's Mainline. She couldn't think of anyone besides the Lost Boys (herself excepted) who would be so brazen as to drink during lunch on school grounds. The problem was that the bottles had been found, and now the Boys had called down the microscopic gaze of the school administrators, as though kids hadn't always drunk on campus. The Lost Boys were adorable, and Cronus and Rufioh were attractive in that jaded, bad-boy kind of way, but they were idiots for leaving their damn bottles.

She was far better at covering her tracks—the vodka had little in terms of flavor or scent, unlike whiskey or her mother's gin, which made it easier to hide it. She didn't necessarily have to at home, considering her mother knew about her drinking and, in fact, practically condoned it, but at school was another matter. Everyone knew, too—Meenah and Aranea and Vriska and Damara, as well as anyone who spent more than ten minutes at a time with her. They all knew, but none of them saw it. As far as they knew, she was just always drunk naturally.

She took another swig as the bus slowed to a stop. People began gathering up their belongings, but Roxy stayed put. This wasn't her stop. There were still two more stops to go.

Rose cast a quick glance back at her, which she returned for a moment before shifting her attention out the window. It was still sweltering hot outside and probably would be for a few more weeks, but that suited her just fine. She far preferred warmer weather if it meant she wasn't forced outside to shiver. Besides, warm weather meant summer, no school, lounging by the pool and reading. It meant being able to stay home and not have to worry about impressing anyone. It meant not having to hear Meenah and Damara and Aranea giggle about the boys while Roxy pretended to giggle along with them.

And it wasn't that she didn't like boys—she liked them just fine. It was that, as far as relationships and actually going with them was concerned, she wasn't interested. When she cared to think about it (which wasn't often), she realized she didn't really like _anyone_ in that way, so she tried not to think about it and drank instead.

It wasn't the only reason she drank so much, but it was a reason.

When the bus finally rolled to a stop two blocks away from their house, Roxy finished off the last of the vodka and stashed the flask in her bag between her books. She got to her feet, picked up her bag, and started walking, digging her nails into the seats as she passed them to keep her steady. She was just a little tipsy right now, but that was because she only had a few ounces in her flask and it had to get her through the day. She once considered carrying a second flask, but she was a _lady_. Ladies didn't carry two flasks, especially not at school.

She'd refill her flask the moment she got home, put it in the refrigerator, and keep it there for tomorrow before making a double martini for herself and starting on her homework. That was what ladies did.

Rose was waiting a few feet from the bus when Roxy stepped off. "What I've gleaned from your step is that you're drunk again," she murmured, wrapping her arm around Roxy's waist. "I'm assuming your flask is empty, correct?"

"Cor-_rect_!" Roxy slurred back.

"Okay." Rose sighed. "Let's get you home."

Even half-drunk, Roxy could tell that her sister wanted to lecture her on her drinking, but she also knew that Rose wouldn't actually say anything. Rose had given her a lecture many times over the past three years, and only recently had she realized it was a waste of breath. After all, it was essentially two against one—with both Roxy and their mother compulsive drinkers, Rose just couldn't win. All she could do was damage control. She kept the household running and prevented Roxy and their mother from hurting themselves and stood silently by, unable to intervene.

Roxy actually pitied her for it sometimes, and the guilt was so strong, it made her reach for a bottle again.

_I'm the world's shittiest sister_, she thought sadly, leaning against Rose and allowing the younger blonde to lead her home. _I should be taking care of her, not the other way around. What a goddamn mess._

She wondered if her mother ever thought the same thing. Sometimes, Roxy wanted to smash every bottle in their house just to force her mother to talk to her, so they could have an actual conversations as actual people instead of through a gin- and vodka-soaked haze. For the eighteen, nearly nineteen years Roxy had spent with her mother, they knew surprisingly little about each other. Every early memory Roxy had of the eldest Lalonde was of her mother being drunk—and whenever Roxy tried to call to mind even one single time when she wasn't, she came up blank.

Roxy rubbed her forehead and tried not to cry as Rose unlocked the front door and ushered her inside. It was dark with every single one of the curtains tugged over the windows, but Roxy could navigate these hallways blind as well as drunk. She didn't have the energy to go to her mother's personal bar right now, so she simply stumbled toward her room. She was tired and sad and all she really wanted to do was sleep for a few hours. After a nap, maybe she could start to function again.

* * *

_Crack!_

The bat made a good, solid sound as it connected with the ball, but even without looking, Equius knew it would be a foul ball. He could hear the difference between foul balls and home-run-worthy cracks, and this one was definitely the former. He'd been playing this game for a long time now. Nothing escaped his notice.

The next pitch was a strike—the third strike for number 52. He was new, though. He'd get the hang of it. He'd shown a lot of promise during tryouts, and he'd spend most of his first season on the bench, but maybe by his sophomore year, he'd be junior varsity.

"Zahhak!" his coach yelled. The coach had a way of slurring his last name, pronouncing it _Zack_, that slightly irritated him. He and Horuss pronounced it carefully, enunciating the Hs as best they could because that was how their father pronounced it as well as the rest of their family all the way back as far as they could trace. Equius tried not to let his annoyance show on his face, though. Many people rushed over the letters.

He swung his bat from hand to hand as he approached home plate. He hoped number 52 was watching—he could improve his technique by watching Equius. It was no longer bragging to say that he was an exceptional baseball player, either. He was a sophomore and in the varsity string. Players didn't typically make varsity until their junior or senior year. He had a gift, though. He would have been varsity the year before, except "freshmen are not varsity material."

The pitcher shook his head slightly, waited, nodded. He and the catcher had decided on a pitch. Equius brought his bat up and held it carefully, sweat already beading up on his forehead. It was good, though. He felt sharp and strong, like a bow about to fire.

Quick as an arrow, the ball flew, and Equius assessed it in a half a second. A fastball, surely not the pitcher's strongest throw, but a powerful one nonetheless—except it was coming in too low, far too low. Equius hopped to the side lest the pitch hit him in the ribs.

"Hey, watch it, Marsten! You trying to kill my star batter?" Coach Diamonds barked.

Equius chuckled. True, it might have hurt him, but it would take far more than a pitch to kill him.

The next pitch was a curve ball, textbook perfect. Fortunately, Equius knew exactly how to counter it. He swung, relaxing his fingers just enough to slide his bat further out, and tightened his grip again just in time to connect with the ball.

_That_ was a powerhouse swing. The crack was earsplitting, and with all the muscle Equius put behind it, the ball went flying. He dropped his bat and ran for first base while the players on second and third scrambled for the next point. They didn't need to hurry, though—the ball was soaring over the outfielders' heads and beyond the fence. The center outfielder looked annoyed, but only because, right now, he was against Equius's team in the scrimmage.

He rounded the bases and got back to home plate, where he finally picked up the bat he'd dropped. _Whoops._ Apparently he'd put more muscle than he realized into his batting, because the bat had split. "Sorry, Coach," he said, carefully setting the now-broken bat behind the bench.

"Keep breaking bats like that," Diamonds said. "If it means we get hits like _that_, break all the damn bats you want."

Equius grinned sheepishly and sat back down, feeling the purple number 10 digging into his back. It wasn't the first bat he'd broken at practice, and it most certainly wouldn't be the last. He'd broken more at games, though. He got in some amazing hits when he played the year before, and he'd only been "freshman fantastic." As a sophomore on varsity, he imagined he'd be playing nearly every game.

Diamonds blew his whistle, and the rest of the players on the field started walking toward the dugout. Practice was over, and now would come the inevitable pep talk. It was the kind of thing Equius normally paid rapt attention to, but his mind started to wander.

Horuss would be getting out of practice soon, too. He was a wrestler, also varsity, but as a senior, that wasn't a surprise. He'd lettered in wrestling ages ago, too, and he was exceptional at it. Horuss was only three inches taller than Equius, who at fifteen had already reached six feet tall, but Horuss was also wider, more bulky than his younger brother.

Once Diamonds dismissed them, Equius took a quick shower in the locker room and headed out to wait for Horuss by his brother's truck. It was originally their father's, but upon Horuss's sixteenth birthday, he'd given him the truck, and somehow, it fit him. Equius couldn't imagine his brother driving a different vehicle. In the intervening two years, Horuss had removed the engine twice and replaced half of truck's components—not because he needed to, but because he was a mechanical genius. He was taking Auto Shop this year even though he didn't need to because he simply wanted to work on more cars.

Equius was less mechanically-inclined when it came to cars, but he liked building other things. He just didn't have time. He was usually so busy with baseball—and track during the off-season—that he barely had time to do his homework at night. But it suited him just fine. His frantic schedule was able to distract him pretty well from the sad fact that he didn't really have any friends.

Horuss appeared a few minutes later, a towel draped around his neck. No one would mistake him and Equius for anything but brothers—they had the same dark skin and hair as well as the same eyes, although Horuss kept his hair much longer than Equius did, long enough for him to tie back. "How was practice?" he asked, tossing his bag in the bed of the truck.

Equius had long since done the same. "It was fine. I broke another bat during practice."

"You did? What did Diamonds say?"

Equius fished the bat out of the truck. "He let me keep it. He thought it was great. It was a home run."

Horuss raised an amused eyebrow. "I see. Well, then, you earned that bat. What do you plan to do with it?"

"I was going to present it to Father for his next birthday. I believe he will find the gift most heartfelt."

"You are quite right. That sounds like a most excellent gift. I applaud you."

Equius grinned and slid into the passenger's seat of the truck. "So how was your practice?"

"It went well. I was assigned a freshman wrestler to train on the finer points of certain holds since he didn't understand them."

"When is your next meet?"

"It's still a few weeks away, which is fortunate since most of the freshmen and the junior varsity string aren't ready yet. The summer has been difficult for them. I believe they forgot much of what they've learned." Horuss hadn't forgotten, though. He'd used Equius to practice all summer and Equius had dutifully gone along with it until he thought he could probably try out for the wrestling team himself.

Horuss started the engine and pulled out of the parking lot. The cheerleaders were starting to head home as well as the various sports teams, and a flash of olive-green caught Equius's eye. He was reminded of that freshman from gym class, the one who'd spoken to him out of the blue. She'd been wearing olive-green when she left the class, after all.

It wasn't her, though. It was Meulin Leijon, a senior, although Equius realized that she and the freshman—Nepeta, he seemed to recall her name being—looked like they could be sisters. Meulin was walking toward an indigo Mainline with someone inside it and he couldn't see who it was, but before he got a chance to look closer, Horuss was turning the corner and the school parking lot was out of sight.

* * *

**Zahhaks making snarky deadpan comments is literally all I want in the world.**


	10. Chapter 10

**In which I finally CronKri a bit and also lesbifins. Also, I was unaware that the JaneRoxy ship name was Cotton Candy but YES EVEN THOUGH ROXY IS ASEXUAL SHE IS NOT AROMANTIC AND THERE WILL BE COTTON CANDY HIHI.**

**Many thanks to pendaly (I FUCKING LOVE YOU YOUR REVIEW ABSOLUTELY MADE MY WEEK), iDreamBig, watchingu, can we not, SilverEnderwolf, and Bitblondetoday for your reviews to the last chapter!**

* * *

Day three was the first day Cronus attended every class of the day. The first two days, he'd skipped Debate class—on Monday, because he was drunk, and on Tuesday, because he and Rufioh had opted to hang out with Meenah and Damara under the bleachers and make snide comments about the underclassmen in Phys. Ed class. Things were going well on that front, he thought. Despite Aranea's obvious disgust for him, Meenah seemed perfectly content to spend time with him, and Damara was only too happy to bask in Rufioh's presence.

To his recollection, he didn't think Rufioh had ever even _had_ a girlfriend, so when he seemed nervous with Damara's attentions, it was understandable. He just needed to get used to talking to girls and he'd be fine—he had the naturally-magnetic personality and looks that most girls loved, so he really didn't have to try very hard. Still, he looked a bit on-edge, so Cronus figured he'd take him aside later and help him out.

In the meantime, most of his attention was focused on Meenah and making her laugh any way he could.

Wednesday, though, was a different story. He knew he couldn't skip the same class forever, so he finally went to his sixth-hour class and sat down in the back, as far away from the teacher as possible.

Of course, _that_ didn't last very long. Some junior in a bow tie came up to him and said, "Hey, man, that's my seat."

Cronus half-rose out of the desk and grabbed Jake English by the shirt. "Not anymore, daddy-o—this is _my—_"

"Mr. Ampora, I'm so glad you decided to join us today," the teacher said coldly.

Cronus slowly turned his head toward the teacher. She looked pleasant enough, but her arms were crossed over her chest and she was glaring sharply at him. Of course, what he noticed most was her accent—it was British, which tripped him up a bit. She was probably new. He certainly didn't remember seeing her before.

Reluctantly, he let go of Jake's shirt.

"Thank you. Now then, Mr. Ampora, since you weren't here the first two days, I went ahead and assigned you a seat in the hope that one day you'd deign to wander into class and actually participate." She touched a desk in the front. "Your desk is right up here. Kindly relocate your belongings."

Fuming silently, Cronus stood up and started walking to the desk his teacher had indicated. _This was a mistake. I should have just skipped the whole semester_, he grumbled to himself.

One kid half-turned to look at him. Cronus definitely didn't recognize this guy, but he had to be either a junior or a senior—this class was only offered to upperclassmen. Then he realized who he was, or at least that he at least vaguely knew him. This was the guy in the red sweater on the first day hanging out with Porrim and the rest of the cheerleaders, the new kid. That explained why Cronus didn't know who he was.

He wasn't wearing that oversized red sweater today. He wore dress pants and a button-down shirt, and his hair was wild and tangled. His eyes were wide and brown, the dark, deep shade of chocolate, and something behind them hinted at a sharp intelligence—or would have, if he didn't look so terrified. That by itself puzzled Cronus, but he didn't really have a chance to think about it too much. His seat was two desks in front of Red Sweater and he sat down, crossing his arms in front of his chest and staring insolently at the teacher.

"At least today, everyone is present," she said lightly, marking something on the class roster. She capped her pen, went to the bookshelf against the wall with the door, and picked up a textbook. She made a big show of bringing it over to Cronus's seat and dropping it on his desk from three feet up; it made a loud _bang_ as it impacted. The whole class jumped in their seats, Cronus included, but he found himself fighting a grin as the Debate teacher said, "Your textbook, Mr. Ampora." Sure, she was being a bit obnoxious and over-dramatic, but not every teacher would let you know when they were actively irritated. It was actually kind of funny, and Cronus couldn't help but be amused and actually _like_ her. She was young, too, in her early thirties by the looks of it, and he got the feeling that this class might not be so bad, at least while she was teaching.

"Now, then, yesterday we were discussing the importance of body language and eye contact when it comes to persuasion. You'll remember that a person who makes more eye contact will be seen as more persuasive than someone who makes less eye contact. Who remembers why that is?"

No one answered. Cronus raised an eyebrow. The teacher—he made a mental note to check his schedule and figure out what her name was—looked around, shook her head, and sighed. Out of nowhere, she suddenly slammed her hands on Cronus's desk and lunged forward, getting right into his face. He nearly fell out of his chair. "It's because rapid blinking and eye contact avoidance are signs of lack of confidence and, by extension, insincerity and falsehoods," she said. She neither blinked nor looked away from Cronus once.

She straightened up and started pacing, and Cronus again found himself fighting laughter. He was sure of it now—this class might actually be _interesting_.

* * *

_Oh, no._ Just when he thought he was safe from greasers.

It seemed like he was seeing them _everywhere_ now—the one in his homeroom, between every one of his classes, at lunch, and now, in his Debate class.

He'd barely noticed when Ampora strolled in and tried to take Jake English's seat, but he _definitely_ paid attention when Miss Muse said, "Mr. Ampora, I'm so glad you decided to join us today."

_Ampora._ He'd heard that name before. Actually, he'd heard it quite a few times by now, in various tones of disgust. He knew exactly who Ampora was, and he suddenly wished he had his sweater so he could hide in it. He felt exposed without it.

"Thank you. Now then, Mr. Ampora, since you weren't here the first two days, I went ahead and assigned you a seat in the hope that one day you'd deign to wander into class and actually participate." Muse tapped the desk two seats in front of Kankri's, and his panic only intensified. "Your desk is right up here. Kindly relocate your belongings."

He did not want to sit anywhere _near_ Ampora—not at all. Even though they were in a classroom setting and he knew Muse would have no compunction with putting Ampora in his place _and_ Ampora probably didn't even know he existed, it still made him nervous. He didn't want to deal with it.

He heard Ampora's feet shuffling toward the desk Muse had indicated and, almost against his will, Kankri looked up at Ampora. It was the closest they'd ever been, and he held his breath, unable to look away.

He looked like a regular eighteen-year-old greaser—dark, slicked-back hair, black leather jacket, jeans, blue T-shirt—but at the same time, he didn't look like a regular eighteen-year-old greaser at all. Greasers weren't supposed to look like that, with bizarrely good looks and wearing T-shirts that made their bright blue eyes seem bluer and more intense. No, it just wasn't fair. Kankri's heart rate picked up as Cronus passed by and for the split second their eyes locked, Kankri could practically see the question mark forming above the greaser's head, and then Cronus was sliding into his seat and Muse went back behind her podium.

"At least today, everyone is present," she said calmly. She wrote something quickly and then went to the bookshelf that, two days before, had held thirty textbooks. Now it just had one, the one apparently reserved for Cronus. She picked up the book, stopped in front of Cronus's desk, and deliberately dropped it with a loud _bang_.

The whole class jumped, but several people giggled behind their hands. Cronus simply tilted his head to the side as though the whole thing hadn't fazed him in the slightest—and maybe it hadn't.

"Your textbook, Mr. Ampora," Miss Muse said.

Kankri supposed it was a good thing that, if Cronus had to be in his class, at least the senior would be sitting in front of him instead of beside or behind him. Logically, he knew he didn't really have a reason to suspect that Cronus or any of his greaser friends would target him, but he didn't really care. Greasers made him nervous. They'd been cruel at his old school and while he hadn't actually seen them taunting anyone, just heard stories, he refused to believe these ones in Ohio were any better.

He only half-paid attention to the rest of class, coming back for a few moments when Muse got up in Cronus's face to make a point before he drifted back out. He figured Debate class would be the perfect time for him to work on his campaign speech, although it would take more than a rousing oration to earn the confidence of his peers. He'd have to try to branch out and become friends with other people to gain votes, and nominations hadn't even been opened yet. Still, it didn't hurt to start early, right? Especially since the other potential nominees had known each other far longer than he did.

The second the bell rang for the end of class, though, Kankri was up and out of there. His last class of the day was World History, and he knew better than to incur the wrath of Mr. Slick. The guy could be outright terrifying when he wanted to be.

* * *

"Come on, Aranea, don't _clam_ up on me. What's eatin' your gills?"

Aranea knew she was being deliberately petulant, but she didn't know why. Actually, she _did_ know why—it was because of that outrageous dick Cronus Ampora. But she didn't know why she was reacting so violently to this whole situation. So she just sat in the passenger's seat with her arms crossed, silently waiting for Vriska and Meenah's sister Feferi to appear so Meenah could drive them all home.

When she didn't answer, Meenah sighed. "Is this a_boat_ Cronus?"

Aranea couldn't keep from shooting a sullen glare at her.

"Thought so. I know you got a big ve_net_ta against him since he tossed you back, but he ain't a bad fish. He's just—"

"He's an asshole!" Aranea snapped. "And for the record, _I_ broke up with _him_. Because he's an asshole!"

Meenah sighed and removed her glasses. For a few moments, she held them up to the light, wiped them off on her shirt, and checked them again. Finally, she slid them back on. "Okay, let's say you're right and Cro _is_ an asshole."

"He _is_."

"Fine. He is. But I can handle assholes," she said calmly. Aranea automatically sat up—Meenah only spoke this seriously when she meant business. "This is our fourth year here, remember? We been swimmin' in the sea of assholes since we got here. And, yeah, Cro Ampora is a douche, but you _reel_ly ain't gonna get a hotter _buoy_ around here except maybe Rufioh, but I ain't about to tangle with that dirt-poor son of a _beach_. And at least I'm not goin' after one of the Makaras—both of them are total messes."

"Are you really going to go out with him after the pep rally, though?" Aranea asked, practically whining.

"Pro_bubbly_. I can't think of a good reason _knot_ to. Besides, it's a _bubble—_sorry, double—date with Damara and Rufioh. He ain't about to hurt me."

Aranea wanted to protest further but she couldn't figure out how. Even when she tried to justify it to herself, it ended up sounding strange and wrong in her head. The fact was, she and Meenah had been friends for ten years. She wasn't necessarily worried that Cronus would hurt Meenah physically, but emotionally... No matter how cool and distant Meenah liked to pretend she was, Aranea knew that Cronus had the capacity to emotionally destroy her.

Not only that, though, was the shudder-inducing thought of someone as great as Meenah with someone as slimy as Cronus. He didn't deserve someone as amazing as Meenah. After all, anyone who'd fucked Porrim Maryam really had some shitty standards.

That still ruled out eighty percent of the sophomore through senior boys at the school, but Aranea was just glad that their little fling had happened _before_ Cronus fucked Porrim. Actually, no matter how much she hated him, Aranea would always harbor a small amount of secret pleasure over being Cronus's first.

Aranea straightened her dress and leaned her head against the car. The mood was still strained, which she mostly blamed herself for, but she didn't know how to diffuse it—not her, know-it-all Aranea Serket, who always knew what to say—so she stayed quiet.

"Are you _shore_ there's not somethin' else about this you're not _shell_in' me a_boat_ this?" Meenah asked.

Aranea smiled to herself, still looking out the window. She'd never tell Meenah, of course, but she actually really liked her lame nautical puns. Aside from Feferi (who she suspected had picked up the habit from her older sister and didn't use them with anywhere near the same nigh-compulsion as Meenah unless she was flustered), she hadn't met anyone who talked like her. "Yeah, I'm _shore_," Aranea replied. It always made Meenah smile whenever someone else used her puns around her.

She caught sight of Vriska strolling out of the building and tugging on her Fuchsia Ladies jacket. It looked odd with her jeans and black button-down shirt, but Vriska was the epitome of "I don't give a fuck." She wore whatever she wanted, however she wanted. Aranea was pretty sure that Vriska's jeans had come from the boys' section of Sears, but no one would ever talk shit about it to her face. It was one of the reasons why Vriska was in the Fuchsia ladies in the first place—she had the capacity to reduce anyone to tears with just a few barbed words. Aranea was very proud of her.

"Hey, girls," Vriska said cheerfully, sliding into the backseat behind Aranea. Then she somehow sensed the atmosphere and looked from Aranea to Meenah and back. "What'd I miss?"

"No_fin_ important," Meenah said. "Just a bit of _buoy_ trouble."

"Lame. Boys are weak."

"Oh, is that why you're not dating anyone?" Aranea teased lightly.

"Please—when you have as many irons in the fire as I do, there's no time for boys."

"What irons—"

"All of the irons. _All_ of them."

Feferi finally appeared a few minutes later, accompanied once again by Cronus Ampora's sullen doppelganger Eridan. Aranea didn't understand what the appeal was for either of the Ampora boys—at least now that she'd seen what an annoying prick Cronus was, and she assumed Eridan was the same way—but for some reason, the Peixes girls were all over them. Feferi waved a giddy goodbye to Eridan as Meenah pulled out of the parking lot, and the farther away they got from where Aranea knew there were Amporas, the more she relaxed until she found herself laughing at something Vriska was saying.

Still, she'd have to figure out some way to convince Meenah not to go out with Cronus before Friday—and considering Wednesday was almost over, she had to work fast.

* * *

**CALLIOPE IS IN THIS AW YISSSSS.**

**It's okay, Aranea, you can tell Meenah you have a big, dumb crush on her.**

**So I'm hoping to have the next update for this posted on Monday, but my little brother needs me to take him apartment-hunting so it may not happen...meaning the next update might not be until Friday or even next Sunday since we're going underway on Tuesday, coming back Friday, and I have duty next Saturday. Laaaaaaaame.**


	11. Chapter 11

**Ope btw, there was a plot point in chapter 7 that will become relevant much later on.**

**Many thanks to iDreamBig, can we not, SilverEnderwolf, Bitblondetoday, Cucumbermonster4, and one guest for your reviews to the last chapter!**

* * *

Dinner had just finished at the Vantas house when there came a rapid knocking on the door. Kankri's mother looked up from her sink full of dishes and peered out the front window. "Who could that be?" she murmured. She wiped her hands off on the dish towel and went to the door.

Kankri was a half a step behind her, so when his mother opened the door, he recognized Porrim immediately, but it was Porrim as he'd never seen her before. Her skirt was long, past her knees, and her sweater was buttoned all the way up. Her hair was pulled back in a modest ponytail, and she smiled politely. "Good evening, Mrs. Vantas!"

His mother looked confused. "Porrim, correct? Porrim Maryam?"

"Yes, ma'am, that's me," Porrim said. "I hope I'm not interrupting dinner. I'm here to pick up Kankri and Karkat."

Kankri never swore aloud, but in his thoughts, he had quite a foul mouth. At that exact moment, he mentally let loose a string that would have had a sailor blushing. She'd mentioned driving them to the pep rally tonight, but he hadn't thought she was _serious_. He hadn't even mentioned the pep rally to his parents—he was convinced they would say no.

"Pick them up? For what?"

"Kankri didn't tell you?" Porrim asked, raising her eyebrows. "There's a school pep rally tonight! I borrowed my mother's car and I told Kankri I'd drive him and Karkat. Can he go?"

Before his mother had a chance to respond, his father finally set down his newspaper and came to the door to see what was the matter as well. "What's going on? Miss Maryam, it's a pleasure to see you. How's your mother?"

"Just fine, Reverend," Porrim said with the most demure smile Kankri had ever seen. "I was just explaining to Mrs. Vantas that there's a school pep rally tonight. I thought Kankri would have told you about it. Everyone's going to be there, and Kankri told me that he really wanted to start branching out and making friends. Would it be alright if he and Karkat went?"

Mr. Vantas rubbed his chin for a moment. "What time does the pep rally end?"

"Around nine-thirty or ten, but I have my sister and one of her friends in the car also so if we were hungry after, we were going to get some pizza."

"And what time might I expect my sons back?"

"No later than eleven," Porrim promised.

Kankri's parents exchanged glances and for a few long moments, he was sure his father was going to say no. But then he surprised Kankri by saying, "I suppose it would be alright. You do have your homework for the weekend done, correct?" This, he directed at Kankri.

He nodded quickly. "Yes, Father."

"Hmm. Karkat?" he called down the hallway toward Karkat's room.

He didn't even bother coming out of his room. He simply shouted back from behind the door, "Yeah, Dad?"

"Porrim Maryam is here to pick up you and your brother for the pep rally this evening."

The door to Karkat's room finally creaked open and he stuck his head out. "Wait, really?"

"Yes, really. Were you planning to go?"

"Uh. Well, I kinda wanted to, but I didn't think you'd let me."

Mr. Vantas raised a curious eyebrow. "As long as you keep yourselves out of trouble, I have no objections."

"I'll make sure they behave!" Porrim said brightly. "Come on, guys! We're going to be late!" As soon as Karkat came to the door as well, she grabbed both him and Kankri by the sleeves and pulled them to the car that was idling at the curb. "Back seat," she instructed. "My sister and her friend are in the front with me."

Kankri slammed his door seconds before Porrim pulled away from the curb and took off for the school. Once they were out of view of his house, he let out a relieved breath he hadn't even realized he was holding. "I didn't actually expect that you would come by to retrieve us. I assumed our discussions were more of the idle variety, and while I appreciate the brief reprieve from what was sure to have been a dull Friday evening, not that spending the evening in the company of one's parents should be construed as inherently boring, I would have—"

"He's a chatty one, isn't he?" said the dark-haired girl squished in the middle between Porrim and the blonde in the passenger's seat. She half-twisted in the seat and flashed him a grin. "I'm Kanaya, Porrim's sister. This is Rose Lalonde."

"Kankri Vantas. This is my brother Karkat. It's nice to meet you."

"The pleasure is all mine."

Porrim turned on the radio to prevent any more chatter, and for a few minutes, the only sound was Guy Mitchell's singing. It was pretty nice, actually, and Kankri sank back into the seat. He wrapped his arms around himself and pulled his arms out of his sleeves. His red sweater had been washed since Monday and he wore it now, and he was grateful for it because despite it being early September, the days were already starting to turn cool. Wasn't it only a few days ago he was nearly sweating through his clothing? How had four days changed that? The weather in Ohio was weird.

Porrim pulled into a parking space and tugged the rubber band out of her hair. "Jesus," she muttered, shaking out her hair. "I _hate_ doing that." She began unbuttoning her sweater and tugged it off, revealing the jade-green shirt she wore beneath it, and tossed it into the back seat. "Had to make a good impression on your parents," she explained with a grin at Kankri's half-confused, half-shocked look. She half-stood up (as well as she could with the steering wheel in the way) and unzipped the side of her skirt. With two shakes of her hips, she pulled it off as well. Underneath the skirt, she wore a pair of black capri pants that Kankri suspected were just barely short enough to hide under it. She tossed the skirt into the back seat as well before switching out her socks and saddle shoes for a pair of jade-green flats that Kanaya handed her from where they were hidden at Rose's feet. "Thank you, dear," she said lightly, ruffling her sister's hair. "Makeup bag, please."

Kanaya popped open the glove compartment and pulled out a small leather bag. For a few minutes, Porrim seemed completely oblivious to her audience as she carefully applied rouge, lipstick, eye shadow, mascara, and eyeliner, but by the time she finished, she'd been transformed from a pretty girl to a total knockout. She caught Kankri's eye in the rearview mirror and grinned. "I'm guessing you didn't hang out with a lot of girls at your old school, huh?"

Kankri shook his head. He knew that females generally wore makeup, but he'd never seen the process. His own mother generally only wore lipstick and a little mascara, but he hadn't even watched her apply that much. It was actually incredibly fascinating.

"Well, that's about to change. Come on—they're about to light the bonfire."

* * *

The last thing she wanted to do was go to this stupid pep rally. It was all her sister's idea, really—the boy she had a crush on was going to be there and she was somehow convinced he was going to ask her out. Aradia secretly doubted it, but she allowed Damara to fuss over her hair ("No sister of mine is going to be seen with her hair a mess") and pick out something for her to wear. She didn't exactly know why her sister was bringing her along anyway, but she would just go with it. There was a plan somewhere, even if she hadn't been clued into it yet.

"Come on!" Damara said suddenly, pulling away from where she'd been watching out the window. "Meenah's here!" She fluffed her hair and went to the front door, yelling behind her, "We'll be back later, Mom!" Without waiting for an answer, she sprinted out, leaving Aradia hopping as she slid her left shoe on.

"Bye! Love you!" she called, hurrying out and slamming the door behind her.

She slowed as she neared the curb, staring into Meenah Peixes's car. It already looked packed—that was Meenah's sister Feferi in the back, and Aranea Serket scooting over in the front seat to allow Damara to slide in next to her. Vriska Serket was in the middle seat in the back, leaving the far-right back seat open for Aradia.

She absolutely hated Vriska. The younger Serket was five feet, six inches of concentrated bitchiness. For all of Aradia's freshman year, she'd gotten away with being by turns fake-friendly and genuinely hateful to her. Vriska, for whatever reason, just loved to antagonize her, and though Aradia tried to ignore it, she wanted less than anything to be squashed in Meenah Peixes's tiny car right next to her. How their older sisters were so close was beyond her.

Damara stuck her head out of the window. "Aradia, what the hell are you doing? Get in! We're gonna miss the best part!"

She sighed and reluctantly slid into the car next to Vriska. She was starting to hate this whole night even more than before.

Fortunately, everyone seemed to be focused on something else. Aradia listened in as Aranea continued the conversation she was having with Meenah about some guy or another, saying he was "no good" for her and that he was an ass, but Meenah was clearly having none of it.

"Lemme break it down for you, Aranea. I don't care. I'm going on _one little date_ with him, not marrying the _buoy_. And until you can come up with a _betta_ reason than just 'he's a jerk,' _clam_ the fuck up."

The elder Serket exhaled sharply through her nose and crossed her arms over her chest but didn't say anything in response.

_Wow, harsh_, Aradia said to herself. She didn't particularly like Aranea, either, but at least she wasn't at Vriska's level of outright putridity. She wasn't stupid enough to share her opinion on Meenah's comment, either—the last thing she wanted was a verbal skewering.

The rest of the ride to Lakeside High School was icy and silent. Aradia wished Feferi or Damara would say something to break the tense silence that had settled in the car, but they were probably hoping that someone else would say something. Hell, she would have settled for Damara gushing about Rufuss or whatever his name was if it would lighten the air.

Aradia felt guilty for feeling relieved that these girls were not her regular friends. She wouldn't fit in with the Fuchsia ladies no matter how hard she tried, and she didn't want to. Damara had tried to get her to hang out with them last year and she'd given it a shot, but Meenah, Aranea, and especially Vriska were a bit too bitchy for her. Feferi seemed genuinely nice, but she also wasn't a member of the Fuchsia Ladies, so that might have explained things. Aside from her sister, the only one in the group Aradia actually liked was Roxy, and she was nowhere to be found tonight.

They finally pulled into the school parking lot. Aradia was out of the car the moment Meenah parked—the atmosphere inside it was stifling. Apparently everyone else felt the same way because Meenah, Damara, and Feferi all threw open their doors immediately and piled out, leaving Aranea sliding out on Damara's side and Vriska following Feferi.

"Jesus," Aradia muttered. She couldn't see the bonfire from here, but she could smell the wood burning, tinging the air with the crisp, sharp scent of smoke and burning. She was sorry to have missed the part where Coach Deuce lit the bonfire, but she loved the smell. It filled her lungs and she found herself wandering toward it unconsciously.

"Thank _cod_ that's over with," Feferi whispered.

Aradia jumped so high she nearly landed on the roof. She hadn't realized Feferi was next to her. She looked back and saw that the other four were sliding their fuchsia jackets on and still hovering by Meenah's car but not really saying anything by the looks of it. "What's going on with them? Why are Meenah and Aranea fighting?"

Feferi sighed, bunching her skirt in her hands. It went just a few inches past her knees and looked to be the same fuchsia color as their sisters' jackets, but it was trimmed in aqua and a light blue-green color. "Meenah's pro_bubbly_ going on a date tonight with that complete cock Cronus Ampora. Aranea is understandably disgusted and is trying to convince her not to do it, but..." She shook her head. "Meenah likes to do whatever she's been told _knot_ to do. I don't like the _buoy_ either, but I also know _betta_ than to try to tell her what to do. I'm just grateful that Cronus's brother Eridan isn't as bad as him."

"Ah. Yeah, Damara's probably going on a date tonight, too. Well, so she says."

"With Rufioh Nitram, right?"

"Um, yeah, I think that's it."

"From what I heard, it was basically a done deal. He really is going to ask her out. The two of them and Meenah and Cronus are going on a date."

"Oh." Aradia looked back at the car. "So what's going to happen with the rest of us? Cronus has his own car, doesn't he?"

"Yeah, I think so. I think Meenah's going to give her keys to Aranea and have her drive us home tonight even though she's all kinds of mad at her. Vriska doesn't know how to drive yet, and neither do I. So Meenah and Damara are going to go with Rufioh and Cronus in Cronus's car and leave the rest of us to essentially fend for ourselves."

The bonfire swung into sight, a cacophony of noise and voices rising into the air with the smoke. The Lakeside High School Marching Band was getting into place around the fire and warming up while, further away, a group of cheerleaders ran through their part. "Part of me wonders what I'm doing here. I'm not on any of the sports teams," she murmured, mostly to herself.

"'If you can't be an athlete, be an athletic supporter,'" Feferi joked, mimicking Principal Quentin's comment during announcements that morning. It had gotten quite a few stifled giggles then, too. "I just happen to be the former, not the latter."

"Oh, right, you're on the swim team."

"Yep!" Feferi looked ahead, narrowing her eyes, and suddenly pointed. "Hey, look, isn't that the Captors over there?"

"Huh?" Aradia followed where Feferi was pointing and saw the blond twins with their backs to them. It could only be them—the Captor twins didn't dress identically, but they dressed similarly enough mostly to make it confusing. "Yeah, I think you're right. Do you know them?"

Feferi shrugged. "I know Sollux a little. He's not so bad. Mituna was in one of my classes last year and he was... he was very energetic. They're both _reel_ly nice, though! Come on, I'll introduce you!" She grabbed Aradia's hand and pulled her along, and Aradia secretly thought that nothing could be worse than hovering next to Vriska all night, so she gratefully followed along.

* * *

**I keep just missing the Captors. That's okay, though, we haven't even heard of the Pyropes yet!**

**All in due time.**


	12. Chapter 12

**Tired. Going to bed.**

**Many thanks to WarAngel24, Bitblondetoday, DarkBlueMahogany, Watchingu, Cucumbermonster4, and one guest for your reviews to the last chapter!**

* * *

"What the hell?" Cronus muttered, staring at Rufioh's house. "I fuckin' told him when we were gonna be here."

"Maybe they lost track a' time or somethin'," Eridan pointed out from the back seat. "Go knock on the door an' let 'em know you're here."

"An' have eleven hundred dogs jumpin' on me? Fuck, no. I'll pass."

Before Eridan could reply, though, the front door flew open and Tavros and Rufioh came out. Rufioh turned his head and shouted something inside before hurrying down the front walk, but Tavros was already getting into the back next to Eridan.

"Shit, took you long enough," Cronus said once Rufioh opened the front passenger door.

"Sorry," Rufioh mumbled. He slouched into the seat, rubbing at his left eyebrow.

"Kurloz is probably already gonna be there," Cronus added. He pulled away from the curb and started off toward the school again. Part of him couldn't believe he was willingly returning to school on a Friday night for non-academic purposes, but it was where he and Rufioh were meeting Meenah and Damara, so he'd tolerate it.

The car ride was tense and awkward, and Cronus became dimly aware that Rufioh hadn't looked at him once—in fact, his hand had never dropped from the left side of his face. Cronus couldn't see his face at all and he wanted to figure out what was wrong—something had to be wrong—but he didn't want to make a big thing of it with Eridan and Tavros in the car. He kept glancing toward Rufioh but decided he wasn't going to say anything about it until their brothers were off doing their own thing.

Fortunately, the moment Cronus parked next to Kurloz's boatlike Mainline, Eridan was off, heading toward Feferi and Damara's younger sister Aradia. Tavros stayed behind, but that was okay. Cronus got the impression that he didn't have many friends.

"What's goin' on?" Cronus started, tugging at Rufioh's wrist, but what exactly the problem was became apparent the second Rufioh's hand dropped from his face.

"Got a steak?" Rufioh half-joked. He had a black eye and his lip was split, but he at least attempted to smile.

"What the hell—did your dad—?"

"It's not a big deal," Rufioh said quietly. "He's done worse."

"Yeah, but what happened?"

Rufioh only glanced at Tavros for a split second before repeating, "It's not a big deal," but it was enough for Cronus to figure it out. Something had happened with Tavros and their father, and Rufioh had stepped in to bear the brunt of it. Tavros appeared shaken but physically unharmed, his hands in his lap, but suddenly, he threw open the car door, got out, and headed off toward the bonfire.

"Where's he—?" Cronus started to get out of the car, but Rufioh put his hand on his arm to stop him.

"Let him. He needs some space."

Cronus settled back into the seat.

"He's takin' Home Economics," Rufioh said abruptly.

"Huh?"

"Tav. That's why my dad was so pissed. He doesn't want one a' his sons takin' a class for girls or whatever, y'know? But... hell, our place is a fuckin' mess. It wouldn't hurt if at least one of us knew how to, like cook or somethin', y'know? So I tell my dad that just denyin' that Mom's dead isn't gonna bring her back an' I guess that was mistake since he's already fuckin' pissed-off an' so he just hauls off an' punches me a couple times an' then he wore himself out an' went back into the livin' room an' started drinkin' again, an' Tav got me all cleaned up so it's good now. I'm fuckin' fine. I'm great."

"That's a lie if I ever heard one."

"Yeah, but if I say it enough, I'll believe it eventually."

They sat in silence for a moment until there was the staccato rapping of knuckles on the window. Cronus popped open the door, his demeanor changing smoothly from concerned to exuberant, and jumped on Kurloz. "Hey, chief, what's happenin'?"

"We got a righteous bonfire, our merry motherfucking band of minstrels, and two thousand motherfuckers who can't be wrong," Kurloz said. He drained his half-full bottle of beer and flung it as far as he could, laughing when it shattered on the pavement a hundred feet away. "I'm ready to up and motherfucking rumble, man."

Cronus had no idea what Kurloz was on tonight—maybe this was his natural state and it had just been so long that he'd forgotten what it was like—but he was definitely in one of his moods. It was a little unnerving, but he'd seen it before. "Don't worry, chief. If anyone tries to start shit, we'll take 'em the fuck down."

Kurloz gave a satisfied nod, hopped up on the hood of his car, and lit a cigarette. "Most motherfucking excellent."

Cronus turned to look around for Gamzee—he and Kurloz were like Tweedledum and Tweedledumber, you seldom saw one without the other—and caught sight of him heading toward the bonfire. "Gamz!" he called, but the junior either didn't hear him or pretended he didn't because he kept right on walking, stuffing his empty hands into the pockets of his jacket and his hair a tangled mess silhouetted in the light from the bonfire.

Not for the first time, it occurred to him that their name, _The Lost Boys_, was incredibly appropriate. The three of them—Rufioh and Kurloz and Gamzee—were all lost. Rufioh had been lost for years, forced to grow up too fast to take care of Tavros and keep him from experiencing the same thing. Kurloz and Gamzee were lost, too, either because of the drugs or something else and using the drugs to numb it. Was Cronus the only one who wasn't lost? Or was he just as lost and simply didn't realize it?

He glanced between Kurloz, exhaling a stream of smoke, and Rufioh, putting a cigarette in his own mouth and striking a match, to see if either of them had noticed his odd brush with poignancy, but they both appeared to have missed it. That was fine with him, though. He was a little terrified of getting too existential for his own good. It was rough all over—even for him.

He briefly considered fishing out a bottle of beer from the back seat of Kurloz's car but decided against it. If he got drunk tonight, it might make the whole night stranger. He felt something cosmic, something radiating from the stars, and maybe that was what affected Kurloz, causing him to switch up whatever drug cocktail he was on and change his personality so completely.

"So, Kurly," Cronus said, employing the nickname he only used when he was being deliberately casual, "gonna have to ask you for a favor."

Kurloz fixed him with a surprisingly sharp look; he must have recognized the tone. "Like what?"

"Well, y'know, me an' Rufi here are meetin' up with Meenah an' Damara an' we're goin' on a double date type a' thing—actually, Rufi, you still feel like goin', or...?" Cronus motioned to his eye to indicate what might prompt Rufioh to back out, but the shorter boy shook his head.

"I'm still fine with goin' if you are."

"Right." Cronus grinned. "If anythin', you got the pity angle workin' in your favor now."

Rufioh glowered at the pavement. "I don't _want_ pity."

"Well, anyway. So, Kurly, I'm gonna be drivin', only there won't be enough room to squish the four of us _an_' Eridan _an_' Tav in there as well, not that I want my fuckin' little brother comin' along anyway an' I'm pretty sure Rufi feels the same. So, basically, what I'm askin' is, can you drive Eridan an' Tav back home tonight?"

Kurloz rolled his eyes. "Of motherfucking course, man. I got your motherfucking back."

Cronus grinned and nudged him playfully. "Thought so, chief. Thanks." He was about to say something else when the sound of female voices drifted over and he turned to locate the source. On their way over were none other than Meenah and Damara themselves, looking purposefully cool. It was probably an act—well, Damara's deliberate aloofness was probably feigned because ever since Monday, she'd talked about Rufioh nearly nonstop, but Meenah's might not have been—but he wouldn't fault them for it anyway. After all, it was best not to look _too_ excited, or else there might be way too much pressure.

Cronus had it all planned out—dinner at the Freeze King (he'd already accepted the fact that, even though Meenah's family had even more cash than his and neither Rufioh nor Damara had any money at all, he'd end up covering the whole check himself) and then, later, if everyone was cool with it, a movie at the drive-in theater just outside of town. It would all be very low-key, very relaxed, not too much pressure. Rufioh and Damara, he wasn't too concerned about. She obviously liked him a lot and he was sure once Rufioh was actually on a date with her, he'd warm up to her—Cronus hadn't missed the way he looked nervous whenever she was around. Meenah, on the other hand, wasn't completely sold on the idea of going steady with him. Which was fine, really, since neither was he, but he had few enough reservations about it to make the evening worthwhile.

"_Whale_, the night's barely begun an' already, it's a massive drag," Meenah drawled. She had a cigarette of her own dangling from her fingertips and she brought it up to her fuchsia-painted lips, sucked in a breath, and exhaled it right into Cronus's face. "What about you, angelfish?"

Cronus chuckled. "I dunno that I'd consider myself an _angelfish_, but..." He was distracted after a moment by Kurloz doubled over, making gagging motions. "Hey, fuck off," he snapped, and Kurloz started laughing.

Then Cronus glanced at Damara, who was staring at Rufioh with her eyes wide. Before Cronus could draw his attention to it, she started forward with a squeak, her hands outstretched toward his face. "Rufioh, what happened?"

Rufioh blinked and, for a second, Cronus thought he'd forgotten how to talk. Then he mumbled, "It's nothin', doll. I'm fine."

"But..." She cupped his face, and it suddenly struck Cronus as odd how tall she was. She and Rufioh were the same height, just under six feet tall. "But your eye and your lip are all—"

"I know. It's nothin', doll, really." Rufioh offered her a small smile even though the still-healing cut in his lip split open in the process.

Damara let out a soft "_aw_" sound and, taking them all by surprise, pulled Rufioh's face to hers and pressed her lips to his.

His eyes widened in shock and his hands fluttered uselessly at his sides. He awkwardly caught Cronus's eye, who gave him a pointed look and mimed putting his arms around an imaginary girl. Rufioh seemed to catch his drift because he closed his eyes and lightly rested his hands on Damara's hips.

After a few more awkward moments, Damara pulled back, and Cronus was pretty sure he saw a thin trail of blood on her lips from Rufioh's. She smiled nervously although her hands never left his shoulders. "Sorry if that was bad or something. I just... well, impulse." She let out a high giggle, her blush evident even in the dark.

"No, no, doll, it wasn't bad," Rufioh assured her quickly. "It's just... heh, I guess that was my first kiss."

_Whoa!_ Cronus never knew that Rufioh hadn't even been kissed before. Apparently, they had a lot of work ahead of them—although Damara seemed more than willing to assist on that front. They still needed to work on Rufioh's confidence, though. He had the whole package, after all—he just needed to learn how to handle it all. "No big deal," Cronus said. "So did you girls wanna hang out here a little while longer or just clear outta here? Freeze King's on me," he added with a grin toward Meenah.

"I think we could stay a little longer," Meenah said with a shrug. "But if Aranea starts headin' over here, let's just go—I'm in no mood to deal with _any_ a' her shit tonight."

"She still doesn't like me, does she?" Cronus asked lazily, as though he didn't already know.

"They were fighting about it the whole way over here," Damara added.

"_Knot_ the whole way. Just a bit at the be_fin_ning. Surprisingly, she doesn't seem to have a problem with you, Rufi."

"I'd fuckin' hope not," Cronus said. "They never dated, after all." He turned to seek Kurloz's backup on this point, but Kurloz had left, too. Another few seconds of scanning the parking lot later, he located the elder Makara heading off to terrorize some cheerleaders. He hadn't seen Porrim with them—maybe she'd dropped from the squad. "Too bad they already lit the bonfire, though," he added. "That woulda been quite the show."

"Oh, yeah, they nearly burned the school down last year," Damara laughed. "I was hoping we'd get closer this year."

"Yeah, but that's what arson is for," Cronus joked.

The bonfire was the only real reason anyone went to the pep rallies anyway. For the most part, only jocks and cheerleaders cared about anything any of the coaches had to say regarding athletics because they were the only ones who bought into that crap. Cronus certainly never did—his true skill lie in music. He played guitar, bass, drums, piano, violin, accordion, and saxophone, although most people generally only found out about the first three, sometimes piano as well. Either way, though, he'd never been interested in breaking a sweat for anything that wasn't strictly necessary—although in his experience, sex fell firmly in the category of "warranted expenditure of energy."

"There probably isn't anything else goin' on there anymore. Nothin' cool, anyway," Rufioh pointed out. "Maybe we should just go."

"Yeah, actually, I'm a little hungry," Damara agreed. She finally slid her hand down Rufioh's shoulder and to his hand. Maybe she thought she was being subtle, but she wasn't. Rufioh wrapped his fingers around hers.

Cronus already had a feeling he knew how Damara's flirting with Rufioh would end. She would eventually comment on being cold and he'd offer her his jacket and she'd giddily accept and the next thing anyone knew, she would be wearing it instead of her Fuchsia Ladies jacket and Rufioh would be out of a twenty-dollar leather jacket. That was no joke when it was essentially his only cold-weather-friendly jacket and he didn't have the cash to buy a new one.

Meenah rolled her eyes. She was clearly thinking something similar, although, like Cronus, she wouldn't actually say anything about it. "Fine. Let me finish my cigarette an' tell Feferi we're leavin'." She pulled out her car keys.

"Who's gonna be drivin' your sisters home?" Cronus asked, looking from her to Damara.

"Oh, pro_bubbly_ Aranea. I still trust _her_ with my car over that fuckin' lush Roxy," Meenah said. "Besides, I don't even think Roxy's comin'." She finished off the last of her cigarette, flicked the butt away, and tugged lightly on Cronus's jacket. "Come on, let's go find Feferi an' Aradia."

* * *

**RUFIOH'S FIRST KISS THE POOR BABY IS LIKE NO I DID NOT WANT THIS I WANTED TO KISS CRONUSSSSS.**


	13. Chapter 13

**Hey, all. I'm really sorry about this, but I have to say this.**

**Let me ask you something. Does any other fanfiction writer you follow update nearly as often as I do? Probably not. My updates come six days a week (not per fic, but in total). I write 2,000-3,000 words for you per day, words I am not being paid to write, words that I crank out in a matter of five or six hours because I do, as a matter of fact, have a full-time job. When I go a few days or a week without updating, please know that it's for a good reason. I _am_ in the Navy after all, and because I'm stationed on a ship, my schedule can be erratic. For example, the week before last, I was underway from Tuesday to Friday. Then I updated this last Tuesday because I had duty on Saturday, I had another fic to write on Sunday, and I started the last chapter on Monday night. From last Tuesday to Thursday, I was writing the first chapter of "Rewriting the Terms" (worth it because I didn't find a single typo). Friday I had duty, I just posted Saturday's update a few minutes ago, and now here is this update. We go underway tomorrow again until Friday, and I have no way of knowing how tired I'll be then, so let's just assume it could be Monday before this fic gets updated again. I'm sorry, but you'll just have to bear with me.**

***endrant***

**Many thanks to niudara, PrincessEbin, shinymoney, rincrocker, name doesnt fit, mangaprinses, Watchingu, ILLLovvv3TTThhh3NNNo.-3, SilverEnderwolf, iDreamBig, Cucumbermonster4, can we not, DarkBlueMahogany, Bitblondetoday, and one guest for your reviews to the last chapter!**

* * *

"Hey, guys! What are you up to?"

Sollux jumped in surprise, but Mituna didn't even appear fazed. He turned around and said, "Looking at the fire, _duh_." His voice was laden with sarcasm, but Sollux knew he was grinning that insane Mituna grin he almost always wore (unless Cronus Ampora was shoving him into the closest empty locker, but that was beside the point), his braces catching sharply on the orange light from the bonfire. That grin meant everything was normal, everything was alright, he was just clowning around.

Fortunately, Feferi Peixes (because that was who had addressed them) wasn't bothered by Mituna's rather rude-seeming response. She just smiled back and nodded. "It's great, isn't it?"

Sollux remained quiet while the two of them—Mituna and Feferi—struck up an easy conversation. It was one of the things he envied about his brother. Physically, they were identical, but to those who knew them (and they were few), they were wildly different. Somehow, Mituna was able to get along with almost everyone with a bare minimum of effort, but Sollux found himself pushed aside and looked over. It didn't help that he kept his eyes down to avoid notice.

He didn't know how Mituna did it. Even with all the bullshit he put up with (Cronus Ampora's harassment over his lisp and braces, both traits he shared with Sollux, among other things), he still felt comfortable talking to other people. Sollux couldn't do it.

After a few moments, he became aware of another person next to Feferi. She'd remained quiet, but she didn't look nearly as uncomfortable as Sollux felt. He knew Feferi from a class they'd had together the year before, but he didn't recall ever seeing the other girl, though.

She looked at him and smiled, and he smiled nervously back before looking away immediately. He wished they could just go home already. Neither of them was even remotely interested in sports or even following the school's athletic program. Mituna had come just to mingle with people and of course he'd had to drag Sollux along with him.

He contemplated shuffling away, but there were people everywhere and he didn't think he could get the solitude he needed. Besides, he would want to drag Mituna away with him, and he and Feferi looked deeply absorbed in their conversation.

"Are you okay?"

The other girl's voice broke into his thoughts and he looked quickly up. "Yeah. I'm fine."

"Are you sure? You look a little... freaked out." She looked genuinely concerned even as she gathered up the material of her skirt in her hands and bunched it up. Maybe she was nervous, too.

"I... don't really like being here when I don't have to be," Sollux explained, carefully not using any words with an _S_ in it. Mituna had the ability to completely disregard his lisp, but Sollux didn't. It didn't help that he couldn't even correctly pronounce his own name. If that wasn't a confidence-killer, nothing was.

"It's okay. I didn't really want to be here, either," the girl confessed. "It was my sister's idea."

"Why did you have to come then?"

"Oh, there's this guy she likes and I guess she was supposed to meet him here and go on a double date with the two of them and Feferi's sister and the guy she likes—"

Feferi's attention had been drawn by the sound of her name. "She doesn't exactly _like_ him—my sister Meenah, I mean. She's just giving him a chance, I think. Actually, I think she thinks he's kind of a dick, which he is, but I guess like a tolerable dick? I'm not sure. But yeah, the four of them are going on this double date thing and I don't get it but whatever."

"Right. It's all weird. And I still don't know why I had to be brought along except in case Damara ends up getting ditched or something."

Sollux nodded slowly. "I think I understand."

The girl grinned. "I'm Aradia, by the way. Aradia Megido."

_Shit._ There was no way he could get out of introducing himself now. He really hated saying his own name. "Um. I'm Sollux Captor." He waited for the inevitable giggle, but it never came.

"Sollux?" she confirmed, pronouncing his name correctly. A lot of people initially said it "Tholluckth," some before realizing he had a lisp and others as a way to make fun of him, but she didn't. It relieved him a little.

He nodded, a faint smile twitching at his lips. "Yeah. Like that."

Aradia's smile widened. "Good. It's nice to meet you, Sollux."

* * *

"No one saw you, did they?"

Jake half-smiled and shook his head. "No, no one saw me. Believe it or not, I can be discreet."

"It's not that," Dirk protested as the junior approached him. Another day, another deserted bathroom, but at least they had less of a chance of getting caught here while everyone else was outside, enjoying the pep rally and the bonfire. The smoke wafted in through a half-open window in the bathroom with giddy shrieks as people chased each other around, but in the darkness, they were only illuminated by a single fluorescent light bulb and the little light from the fire that turned the scrubbed pale blue tiles a strange fiery hue.

"Then what is it? Are you so sure Dave didn't see _you_?" Jake challenged, his eyebrow raised.

God, he hoped not. If Dave or Dack found out about this... they wouldn't, though. Dirk would make absolutely sure they didn't find out. He'd done well enough so far, although that could change with a little slip. Sometimes, Jake buried himself so far under his skin that he didn't care if they ever got caught, but then he would look up at him with those bright green eyes and Dirk would remember that he didn't want there to come a day when he couldn't look at those. It reminded him of their need for secrecy. Just a little while longer, two more short years, and they could leave all this behind them, start over somewhere else where it was just the two of them and no one knew them. He couldn't wait.

"He didn't. He was busy with Harley and a few other people."

Jake nodded, his smile faint. Harley was actually his cousin. That was how they'd met. Sure, in school, they'd seen each other in the hallways in between classes, but their first truly important face-to-face interaction had happened at Harley's house while Jake had been over.

That had been the first time Dirk got a good look at him and the first time Jake ever really looked at him, and there had been that immediate spark of attraction. Dirk had convinced himself that it was only on him, that Jake didn't feel it, until he realized he had two classes with Jake and that suddenly, the other boy kept looking at him as if he was some riddle to be solved. Dirk tried to pretend he didn't notice it, but one day after class, he reached the end of his patience with it. He intercepted Jake in the bathroom and demanded to know what he kept looking at.

"You confuse me, that's all," Jake had said, taking him completely by surprise.

"_I_ confuse _you_?"

Jake had nodded, lowered his eyes for a moment, and then looked back up. "Sorry. I didn't think I was looking all that much, honestly. I'll stop, though, if it makes you that uncomfortable."

It really didn't, though. On a whim, he'd pressed his lips to Jake's in a quick, soft kiss. He pulled back less than a second later, wondering if he'd gone insane, but Jake didn't look panicked or horrified or anything that Dirk expected. Stunned, yes, but he also looked... awed.

"Sorry," he started, but he never finished forming the word because Jake pulled Dirk back to him and returned the kiss, and it was all downhill from there.

And now they were here, in the second-floor bathroom that would almost certainly not attract anyone else, not with another bathroom closer to the bonfire, and Dirk felt like a dick for even suggesting that Jake would be anything other than careful.

"I wasn't trying to say that someone might have seen you. I just worry. That's all."

The half-smile returned to Jake's face and he lifted his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. "I know what you mean. Clandestine meetings in school bathrooms don't exactly put my mind at ease, either."

"I wish I could take you out on a regular date," Dirk said. "I don't like this fake-studying bullshit, either."

"Maybe we could... I don't know, meet at Jade's house and figure something out. While Jade and Dave are doing their thing, we could leave." Jake shrugged helplessly. "At least I'm trying to think of something."

"It could work," Dirk conceded.

"Besides, look at us," Jake added. "Who'd honestly suspect what's really going on? Even if it seems obvious to us, I really think they're all clueless."

Dirk wasn't so sure, but maybe Jake was right. He wished, though, that he could share Jake's confidence.

* * *

Tavros wrapped his arms around himself and tried to appear as small as possible, but apparently it wasn't small enough. "Hey, little motherfucker! Wait up!"

Only a Makara would refer to someone as "little motherfucker," and that wasn't Kurloz's guttural drawl. It was Gamzee, although that didn't reassure him at all. He didn't want to talk to _anyone_, least of all one of his brother's fucked-up friends. He spun around, dropping his arms, and his hands balled into fists at his sides. "_What_?" he snapped.

What could Gamzee Makara conceivably want from him? Wasn't it bad enough that his father was a violent, angry old drunk who thought both of his sons were worthless failures? Wasn't it enough salt in the wound when Rufioh took the blows meant for _him_? And now _this_? Why couldn't people just leave him alone?

There was a fire in Tavros's eyes, he knew it, he could feel it burning him from the inside out, but if the look was a warning, it was lost on Makara. He continued his approach, seemingly unperturbed by the frustration on Tavros's face.

"What's going on, motherfucker? Why's Rufioh's motherfucking face look like a train hit it?"

"Why don't you ask _him_?" Tavros spat. "He's your friend, isn't he?"

"Well, yeah, brother, but he's got motherfucking Cronus to worry about him." Gamzee shoved his hands into the pockets of his black leather jacket. "I've seen you around. You don't have any motherfucking friends to worry about _you_."

A bit of anger escaped him. "No, but I'm fine."

"Come on, brother," Gamzee started, but Tavros cut him off with a sharp glare.

"Don't call me that—I'm not your brother." Rufioh was his brother. Rufioh kept him safe from their old man. Rufioh was his protector. That's what a brother was—someone who would keep you out of trouble, who would make sure nothing bad happened to you. Gamzee Makara had no fucking right to refer to Tavros as "brother."

"Shit, I'm sorry," Gamzee said quietly, looking genuinely sorry. "I just meant that a motherfucker needs someone to talk to sometimes. I know you got your motherfucking brother but sometimes you need a motherfucker on the outside, too."

Tavros crossed his arms back over his chest. "What, and you think I want to talk to _you_?" Maybe he was being a bit unfair now—and unnecessarily rude—but it was nice for once to have someone to lash out at. Besides, Gamzee kept right on standing there, like Tavros's words didn't hurt him.

"Maybe. If you didn't have someone else, I could motherfucking be there for you."

Tavros hated that he was right, though. He really didn't have anyone else who would listen to him. He really didn't have a single friend aside from Rufioh. The girls at his table in Home Ec were nice enough to him, Rose and Kanaya and Jane, but they didn't know about his home life. They didn't know about his dad and his brother and his dead mother and all their bulldogs and all the shit he had to put up with. Gamzee knew, and he was actually willing to listen.

"Really?" he asked quietly.

Gamzee nodded.

"My old man hit him."

"What the motherfuck for?"

"Because he..." Tavros swallowed. "He kept my dad from hitting me instead. My dad doesn't want me taking... one of my classes." He wasn't quite ready yet to tell Gamzee that he was taking a girls' class.

"That was motherfucking brave of him. Rufioh, I mean."

"Yeah, I know." Tavros closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. "I just wish my dad had died instead of my mom, you know? Is that bad?"

"Maybe," Gamzee said gently. "But I think it's motherfucking understandable. Your old man is a mean motherfucker."

"Don't I know it," Tavros murmured. He rubbed his arms again. Gamzee was looking at him unblinkingly with bright blue eyes that almost looked indigo in the strange light from the bonfire. "Look, I just want to be alone for a little while. If I need someone to talk to later, I'll come find you though, okay?"

Gamzee nodded. "Sure thing, motherfucker. You know where I'll be." He smiled brightly and went back the way he came, back toward Cronus Ampora and his car, and Tavros scratched the back of his head as he watched him go. _He's a weird guy._

* * *

The four of them piled into Cronus's car as soon as Meenah handed the keys to her Windsor Deluxe over to Aranea (who glared sharply at Cronus but otherwise didn't say anything). It didn't bother him, though. He was used to her by now, and he just waved pleasantly at her with an unlit cigarette between his lips.

In the back, Rufioh and Damara sat close but not too close. Cronus could tell he was still nervous about this whole situation, especially after Damara kissed him, but Cronus couldn't figure out why. Rufioh had nothing to worry about. All he had to do was be himself—Damara liked him no matter what.

She also seemed a bit nervous, though. After impulsively kissing him, she'd retreated back a bit as though she'd been too forward (maybe she had, but what did it matter?), but she kept looking back up at Rufioh and blushing. He would catch her eye and smile nervously and then look away and it was actually making Cronus a bit nauseous, but they were both dorks. They'd figure it out soon enough.

Meenah dropped into the passenger's seat next to Cronus. "_Whale_, Fef wasn't thrilled, but she don't have another _wave_ to get home besides ridin' with Aranea, so..." She shrugged. "And I told her to make _shore_ Aradia got home, too," she added to Damara.

"Huh? Oh. Okay," Damara said. She'd been distracted by Rufioh. Again.

"Eri was a little pissed, too," Cronus said with a grin. "He doesn't like Kurloz all that much, I guess." He shrugged. "Looks like he's just gonna have to deal with it. You cats ready to rock an' roll?"

"Shut the fuck up," Meenah said, buckling her seat belt. "Let's just fucking go already."

Cronus didn't need to be told twice. He put the New Yorker in reverse and backed out of the parking lot. The Freeze King awaited.

* * *

**Sorry for jumping around. Next chapter should be a little more cohesive... (I didn't even do all the things I planned on!)**


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